I sincerely hope that they aren't over-stretching themselves with the successful takeover of the Lloyd's empire.
The Guardian - 19/07/12
Co-op arrives as high street banking presence with Lloyds deal
Co-operative has secured a cut-price deal to take over 632 Lloyds Banking Group branches in a deal heralded as creating a new challenger bank on the high street.
Lord Pesto of Sauce wrote:The Co-op's bank will operate off Lloyds' IT systems, and Lloyds is providing the senior management of the Co-op's enlarged bank.
Lord Pesto of Sauce wrote:The Co-op's bank will operate off Lloyds' IT systems, and Lloyds is providing the senior management of the Co-op's enlarged bank.
I would have been happier if it was the TSB not Llloyds that was merging.
When Lloyds and TSB merged, TSB were in the process of writing a whole new system(well a software house was doing the work), but that was dropped. The same software house, coincidentally took over the running of the Coop bank IT systems. I was contracting for said software house for another well known high street bank, and some ex Coop staff also worked on that project.
Essentially they are all working together, sharing and subcontracting to each other. The Coop bank may be a lot better than the others, but they are not perfect.
One reason I would have rather seen TSB merging with the Coop, was that I visited both Lloyds(in London), and TSB(near Manchester) and I was much more impressed with the TSB operation. Having done contracts for many welknown names, I can usually pick which ones manage their systems and staff better. Mind you one of the worst managers I did some work for, was ex Coop, but no-one got on well with that manager and as a result got moved around a lot.
I have been involved in co-operative movement for past couple of years, and the impression I got was that as a movement it was growing, but the emphasis was on getting other cooperatives up and running, and doing more work advising others than actually doing the work themselves. Maybe they are actually getting out of direct banking themselves(less risk), but helping other more sustainable 'banks' get set up. We have a local credit union set up as a cooperative. The Coop can therefore stay in the world of finance, at considerably less risk.
There as also talk of some type of Coop/co-operative take over of the Post Office.
On a totally different angle, and also a fictional one, a recent TV drama series ends with the idea of all of the services of a large city council being set up as a co-operative, and getting rid of the thieving cheating big businesses who were trying to take everything over.
The Co-Op seems to go from strength to strength. 
You and me both.
