Metro Bank is going through some difficulties, to say the least, right now. First Direct and Marks and Spencer are brands of HSBC. First Direct is independent

Metro Bank is going through some difficulties, to say the least, right now. First Direct and Marks and Spencer are brands of HSBC. First Direct is independent enough that you get a very different service from them compared to vanilla HSBC. As others have said, Co-op is owned by private equity now. When they were a true co-op, you could forgive them the odd bit of sloppy service but there's no excuse now. If I were coming to the UK for the first time, I'd see if a local bank in my country (usually it's HSBC or Santander) could offer to help me set up when a UK account with their local subsidiary. KYC, credit checks, etc can make opening an account difficult when you're new to the country.