The Co-operative Bank
A clearing bank lending vanilla SME term debt and commercial mortgages from £250k to £15m, with a customer-mandated ethical policy that hard-excludes several sectors and no leveraged or acquisition product.
Why they are included
The Co-operative Bank, owned by Coventry Building Society since January 2025, lends to SMEs through fixed-rate term loans, variable commercial mortgages to £15m and overdrafts, all deposit-funded and relationship-managed above £2m of turnover or £250k of borrowing. Its lending is sized on trading performance and security rather than an EBITDA multiple. The bank's customer-led ethical policy is not a marketing line but an underwriting screen: fossil fuel extraction, arms, intensive farming and animal testing are excluded outright, and the policy is refreshed by customer ballot.
How to read them as a baseline
It reads as a relationship and working-capital home for an established, modestly geared trading company rather than as an event lender. Where a £3–15m requirement is a straightforward refinance of existing term debt and a commercial mortgage on trading premises, the bank is a reasonable comparison point on price. It is also the natural first call for a borrower whose own values or customer base make the ethical policy an asset rather than a constraint, and for charities and social enterprises, where it has a long-standing franchise.
When the market needs to move beyond them
There is no published acquisition, MBO or leveraged finance proposition, so a buyout, a growth-capex stretch or a cash-out recapitalisation is outside what this bank does. The ethical exclusions are hard and worth checking early against a target's own supply chain, since they reach further than a standard bank's sector list. For anything requiring leverage against cashflow rather than a charge over property, the market's answer sits with challenger banks and funds.
Published terms
- Pricing
- Variable-rate business loan ~1% arrangement fee; margin not published as bps over SONIA
- Speed to terms
- Not published
- Sponsored or sponsorless
- Corporate/SME only - no sponsor/LBO proposition
- How they decide
- Relationship-managed for turnover >=£2m or borrowing >£250k; no published acquisition-credit process
- Search funds and ETA
- No published route for search-fund or first-time acquirer borrowers
As published by the lender and last reviewed June 2026. Terms quoted on a deal are set by the credit, not by a published band.
What rules a deal out
Stated limits, taken from The Co-operative Bank’s own published criteria. A limit is where a lender starts from, not where it always ends: several of these move on a strong enough credit.
- No acquisition/MBO/leveraged-finance product
- Ethical-policy hard sector exclusions
- SME term/mortgage only
- No appetite in adult, animal testing, arms to oppressive regimes, crypto or fossil fuel extraction
How they sit against the category
- It opens lower than almost all of them, at £250k.
- 6 of the 12 publish an indicative price at all; it is one of them.
Counted across the 12 clearing & relationship banks in this directory, on what each one publishes. What a lender discloses and what it will do are different things.
Questions this page answers
How large a facility does The Co-operative Bank write?
Published facilities run £250k to £15m. A band is what a lender states it will do, not what it will do on a given credit.
Does The Co-operative Bank lend to search funds or ETA buyers?
Not on the published evidence. The Co-operative Bank publishes no route for search-fund or first-time acquirer borrowers. A searcher's route to a lender usually runs through the quality of the target and the equity behind it.
Does The Co-operative Bank lend to companies without a private-equity sponsor?
Yes. The Co-operative Bank lends to owner-managed and corporate borrowers, and publishes no private-equity sponsor proposition.
What does The Co-operative Bank lend?
The published product set is sme business lending.
On the record
January 2025: Coventry Building Society completed acquisition of The Co-operative Bank (deal up to £780m; approved Nov 2024.
Sources: co-operativebank.co.uk
This page is a comparison baseline drawn from public sources, not financial advice, a product profile or a recommendation. A clearing bank's role in a given raise is established by testing the credit against the market, not inferred from a page.