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Banking is a complicated subject – often choosing a bank is based upon geographical location rather than ethical or other issues.
How does a Meeting or a Finance Committee make decisions about which bank to use for day to day business, not to mention where to invest any reserves or savings?
Often a decision is made based on out of date information or on a whim from one of the committee members. How can a decision be made without hours of research? Thankfully there has been a huge increase of interest in ethical finance since Young Friends General Meeting brought that issue to wider Quaker notice in 1980.
Many meetings use the Co-Operative bank but surprisingly, that doesn’t rate the highest on ethical and other issues. Move your Money is a not-for-profit organisation working to raise awareness about the broad range of financial institutions available to customers in the UK. They are funded by the Barrow Cadbury Trust and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, charitable foundations promoting excluded communities.
Ethical Consumer helped create the scorecard and has other information on ethical finance website too.
Geographical location, the ability for the Treasurer and Finance Committee to access the accounts on-line or any other issue may still affect the final decision but hopefully these tools will help cut down the amount of research time before any decision is made.
Quaker Peace & Social Witness have prepared the following paper about our relationship with the Co-operative Bank in response to questions raised by Friends: Banking with the Co-operative – A dilemma for Friends [PDF: 147kb – new window].
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