The bank expects issues such as genetic engineering, animal experimentation, global climate change, human rights and the arms trade to be among issues its customers will want to debate during the exercise which it hopes to complete by May 2002. The Co-op first embarked on such a wide consultation of customers in 1991 which led to the bank pledging not to back a variety of companies, particularly those involved in human rights abuses, the arms trade and animal testing. Because of changes in recent years, the Co-op bank expects new issues to be added to the list of unethical practices by next year. For instance, genetically modified food and genetic engineering of other products is one of the more recent subjects to be thrust on to the agenda. Attempts to ban hunting with hounds and stop trading in furs mean that these may now be on their way off the list of investments to avoid.
Some issues are likely to survive, however.
The ethical policy, last updated in 1998, covers more than avoiding business with companies that abuse human rights and animal welfare. The Co-op, which believes a third of all new customers join because of its ethical stance, checks potential clients against its ethical policy before lending them money or offering them other financial services. It has not emulated financial firms which run investment funds with an overt ethical stance. But its wide-ranging ethical approach has influenced the way other companies invest money on their customers' behalf. Even the stock exchange is to get a new index which companies can enter only if they meet certain ethical criteria.