Could this mark a fresh start for the Co-op Bank?

The approval of these reforms coincides with a push by the Co-op to restore trust in its brand, with an advertising campaign highlighting the bank’s customer-led ethical policy.

The TV spot - which was directed by Tony Kaye, the director of American History X, with a score composed by Les Miserables musician Anne Dudley - will air for the first time on Wednesday evening, during Coronation Street on ITV and the Champions League game on Sky Sports 1.

It shows a man having the words “Ethics & Values” tattooed on his back, inspired to ink by the bank’s ethical policy. “I belong to an organisation that does things a little differently,” he says, over a backdrop of images of skulls and bullets.

The Co-op, which has turned away more than £1bn of business that did not fit in with its ethical policy, said it wants to attract customers to its services “for all the right reasons".

The bank aims to avoid investing in companies involved in animal testing, the arms trade or sweatshop labour, among other areas that it considers unethical according to its standards.

Niall Booker, chief executive of the Co-operative Bank, said the ad campaign is “the start of reinvesting in the brand and what makes us different.”

“We understand that the difficulties the bank has faced in the last year are bound to test customers’ beliefs, but now the bank is stronger we want to reassure them that we have not forgotten the values and ethics that set us apart and remain a key part of our success in the future,” Mr Booker said.

Later this autumn, the mutual plans to announce the fifth update to its ethical policy since it was adopted in 1992, following a June poll of more than 74,000 customers and employees.

The 170-year-old mutual has suffered a string of setbacks over the last 18 months.

Last April, the Co-op Group’s then-wholly owned banking arm reneged on a deal to buy Lloyds’ TSB branches due to economic conditions. It later revealed a £1.5bn hole in its finances.

It then emerged that the bank’s former chairman, Paul Flowers, had bought Class A drugs - earning the ordained minister the nickname “the crystal methodist”.

The bank posted a £2.5bn loss for fiscal 2013. The Co-op Group has since been forced to reduce its stake in its banking arm from 100pc to just above 20pc, lay off a fifth of its banking staff, close dozens of bank branches and sell off several businesses to reduce debt.

Euan Sutherland, the Co-op’s former chief executive, quit in March after his attempted reforms were repeatedly blocked. At the time, he called the mutual “ungovernable”.

more