In the Brazilian private banking system, after the Real Plan (Plano Real), the conquest of low income customers and the commercial aggressiveness in the selling of products and services, became fundamental to reach high rates of profitability and maintenance of the banks positioning before competition. This strategy generates a tension between the company´s expectations, to maximize profits, and the customers expectations, in obtaining advantages and bigger benefits from these institutions. These conflicts of interest can provoke ethical distortions of behavior, from the banks´ employees, as much as from the low income customers, that are inserted in a socialeconomic difficulties context. At the end, both, end up becoming dependent on the banking system. Since de Resolution 2.878 of 07/26/2001, of the Central Bank of Brazil (Banco Central do Brasil), a series of regulating mechanisms started to be adopted in the banking system, what made the banks rethink their strategies, and elaborate or reformulate their ethical codes. However, it is necessary to verify, the real impact of these codes in the employees´ behavior, in the commercial relationship with the low income customers. This research therefore, pursuits the analysis of the following question: The ethical codes of the private retail banks, orientate an effective practice of an ethical behavior in the consumption relation with the customer? To reach the goal of this research, the analysis of the ethical codes of the three biggest Brazilian private banks were made, together with interviews, of qualitative character, with low income customes and the managers of the respective banks in the city of Rio de Janeiro, in which was possible to identify the coherence between the speech and the practice of the ethical behavior in the commercial relationship. These analysis, well-founded in a theoretical reference based in the conceiving of values, attitudes, and behavior together with various theories about ethic and the taking of ethical decisions, favored the construction of a present-day portrait of the practice of ethic in the consumption relation in the banking market in the city of Rio de Janeiro.