Stop your bank supporting a system of suffering and help make finance a force for good. Tell them to do better.

Highstreet banks are able to invest their customers' money into cruel, industrial scale factory farming, without them knowing. In our new Banking on Welfare report we reveal how a lack of animal welfare policies is allowing our banks to fund factory farming projects which are harming animals, people, and the planet.

Read our full report

Your money matters for animals

Animals deserve to live their lives free from pain and suffering. However, UK banks are likely to be investing your money in companies around the world that inflict immense cruelty to billions of animals on factory farms each year

Factory farms force billions of animals across the world to endure a lifetime of suffering in cramped and filthy conditions; unable to express their natural behaviour. Chickens are raised from birth in windowless barns, crammed into spaces smaller than an A4 piece of paper. Pigs spend day after day in barren, cramped conditions, developing painful sores. Mother pigs are so tightly caged they can’t even turn around to see their piglets, growing so frustrated they bite the bars of their cage. Factory farmed fish swim endlessly in circles, eaten alive by lice.  

This situation is also an existential threat to people and the planet: factory farms are a dangerous breeding ground for the next global pandemic, and drive environmental destruction, fulling our climate crisis.

As customers of these banks who care deeply about animal welfare, we know animal welfare plays a key part of your day to day life. You support organisations like World Animal Protection, you look out for welfare standards when buying food and go the extra mile to care for your pets, including ensuring they receive necessary veterinary attention.

But how would you feel if you knew your bank was using your money to support an industrial-scale system of suffering? 

World Animal Protection commissioned research into the animal welfare policies of ten of the UK’s biggest banks. What we found was shocking.

Of the banks investigated, not one had any policies dedicated to animal welfare. Five did mention animal welfare in other policy documents. The other five made no mention of animal welfare at all.  

By not having a dedicated animal welfare policy, banks could well be investing their customers’ money into unspeakably cruel, industrial scale factory farming. The financial sector has a lot of leverage over the companies they finance, that's why we are asking for banks to adopt the Farm Animal Responsible Minimum Standards (FARMS) and have a dedicated animal welfare policy.