Forget haunted houses and creeping shadows – some of the scariest stories this Halloween come from banks and fund managers running wild with your cash. The money in your account doesn’t just sit there gathering dust. It’s being lent and invested and recycled, often in ways you wouldn’t want your name attached to.
But there’s hope: some banks are more halo than horror. Triodos Bank (a Good With Money “Good Egg”) aims only to fund positive impact. Others.. well, they’re still in need of a serious spiritual detox.
In the UK, major firms poured £119 billion into fossil fuel activities between 2020 and 2024, and some banks are still putting much more money into fossil fuels than into climate-friendly alternatives.
If any of the investments below disturb you, challenge your bank – or better still, switch to one that doesn’t trade in nightmares.
Top 5 LEAST ethical banks – and where to move for good
Why banking choices matter
Triodos Bank emphasises that even small deposits in a sustainable provider get aggregated into a force for good. Choosing transparency and ethical standards means your money is deployed in ways you’d be comfortable with: no complicity in climate destruction, human abuse or ecological ruin.
Other ethical or better-than-average providers include Nationwide, Cumberland, Engage, Monzo and Starling – and for businesses, Unity Trust Bank, which lends exclusively to organisations delivering social impact.
For an easy-to-navigate summary of which bank’s invested where, and what may be potentially ‘dodgy deals’ as they call them, take a look at Bank Track. It publishes a global list of banks, sorted by country; the companies they invest in, and the focus of those companies.
Top 6 ethical current accounts
9 chilling sectors your bank might be funding
Here are nine categories you should look out for:
1. Fossil fuels and dirty energy expansion
This is still the top fright. In 2024, the world’s top 65 banks committed $869 billion (£647 billion) to fossil-fuel companies, including $429 billion (£319.5 billion) to firms expanding exploration or infrastructure.
Banks in the UK are no exception: between 2020 and 2024, the Big Four (Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, NatWest) funneled £119 billion into fossil fuel activity – more than double what they lent to green companies in that period. Barclays alone provided $35.4 billion (£26.3 billion) in fossil finance in 2024, making it Europe’s most aggressive fossil-fuel bank that year.
2. Carbon bombs and “mega” fossil projects
UK banks have quietly backed “carbon bomb” projects. These are massive fossil ventures whose emissions alone could derail climate goals. One study found that between 2016 and 2023, nine London-based banks were involved in financing 117 such projects – equivalent to 420 billion tonnes of CO₂.
3. Deforestation, rainforest destruction and land grabbing
Banks continue to underwrite or invest in agribusinesses whose operations cause deforestation, habitat loss and land grabs. From 2016 to 2024, financial institutions made around $26 billion (£19.4 billion) in deals tied to deforesting companies.
HSBC, for example, has been singled out for providing billions in financing to firms linked to major deforestation, even after its public “no deforestation” pledges.
Barclays, meanwhile, was a major financier of JBS – a meat company tied to rainforest destruction – in 2022.
4. Transition minerals: clean energy, dirty supply chains
The shift to clean energy depends on minerals like lithium, cobalt and nickel – but the way these resources are mined often comes with serious environmental and human rights risks. Between 2016 and 2024, major banks invested around $493 billion (£367.2 billion) in mining projects for these minerals, many located in biodiversity hotspots or on Indigenous lands.
The problem isn’t the minerals themselves, but weak oversight. Too many financial institutions still lack strong policies to ensure mining happens responsibly, protecting local communities, water sources and ecosystems. Sustainable sourcing should be part of the energy transition, not a casualty of it.
How to have a sustainable Halloween
5. Human rights violations, land dispossession and abuse
Banks in multiple countries have financed projects tied to forced displacement, violations of Indigenous rights, or environmental damage in low-income regions. A recent analysis found many institutions scored extremely low (average 22/100) in ESG policy effectiveness around deforestation, pollution, human rights.
6. Arms, military equipment and conflict zones
Your bank might be facilitating finance or insurance for arms producers, military contracts, or trade in sensitive regions. Many banks have been named in NGO reports linking them (directly or indirectly) to arms groups, war economies or conflict-zone extractive projects. (See NGO reports collected by Ethical Consumer and others.)
7. Animal cruelty, factory farming, and meat supply chains
Banks help fund meat and agribusiness operations linked to deforestation, biodiversity collapse and livestock-related emissions. Barclays, as noted above, backed JBS – a huge player in the meat industry with links to Amazon destruction.
8. Poisonous industries and chemical pollution
This includes mining chemicals, heavy metals, pollution-intensive manufacturing, waste incineration, coal ash handling, etc. Banks sometimes underwrite projects with weak environmental controls, or serve clients that violate pollution and waste standards.
9. Hidden high-risk trading
In the darker corners of finance, some banks make money from complex trades, known as derivatives, that few people really understand. These financial products are linked to things like interest rates, oil prices or company debt, and are often traded in private markets that lack transparency.
Because they’re so complicated and hard to track, these “opaque” deals can hide big risks – and when things go wrong, the fallout can spread quickly through the financial system (as we saw in the 2008 crash).
It’s another reminder that even when your money isn’t funding pollution or exploitation, it can still be caught up in risky or secretive parts of the financial world.
