Bank account opening
We will assemble the file a bank is required to verify, take the ownership chain down to the individuals behind it and answer the compliance questions inside the deadlines they carry.
Standard threshold
Порог стандарта
USD/EUR 15,000
15 000 USD/EUR
A transfer, at most
Перевод, не выше
USD/EUR 1,000
1 000 USD/EUR
When you need help opening a bank account
The company exists, the account does not
The registry works to its own clock; the bank works to a file. One arrives on schedule, the other is decided, and registration is only the ticket to the queue.
The bank asked for a business plan
It has to understand the purpose of the relationship, the activity to expect and where the money comes from. The registration documents answer none of the three.
Your ownership chain leaves the country
The bank has to arrive at a living person at the end of it. It traces upwards until it does, and a holding company does not end the search.
The declared activity says one thing
Money that moves differently from the activity the company registered raises questions the bank has to close before it opens anything.
A refusal arrived without a reason
In many places the duty to give a reason is written for individuals and sole traders, and a company sits outside it. Which rule reaches you depends on where you asked.
What you get
- A shortlist of banks with reasons
- The corporate file assembled
- The ownership chain down to people
- Answers filed inside the deadlines
- A complaint route where one exists
What decides whether a company gets an account
Two things decide a company account, and the registration certificate is neither. The first is a file: the facts an institution has to establish before it may hold money for you. The second is where you are asking.
The corporate work around it sits under Corporate & Structuring, and setting the company up under company registration.
The four things a bank has to settle
National rulebooks differ in wording and agree in shape: they are written against one international standard. It binds countries, not you and not the bank in front of you — each turns it into its own law, and the institution answers to that law.
- Who the customer is, verified from reliable and independent documents or data.
- Who the beneficial owner is, with reasonable measures to verify that person and, for a company, how it is owned and who controls it.
- What the relationship is for: its purpose and its intended nature.
- Whether it keeps making sense afterwards, through ongoing scrutiny of transactions against what is known about the business, source of funds included.
The same standard prohibits anonymous accounts and accounts in obviously fictitious names outright.
Where the chain of owners stops
It stops at a person. The beneficial owner is the individual who ultimately owns or controls the customer, or on whose behalf a transaction is conducted, and the definition takes in whoever exercises ultimate effective control by other means. A holding company in the middle lengthens the search.
Where a corporate register publishes a reporting percentage, that line belongs to the register: an institution may look below it, because a reporting line and a due diligence line come from different rules.
Two questions that look like one
Source of funds is where this particular money came from. Source of wealth is how the person behind the company came to have money at all. Different documents answer them, and a file that covers one while implying the other is the usual reason a review stalls.
The amounts the standard names, and the ones it does not
| What starts the checks | The figure in the standard |
|---|---|
| Opening a business relationship | No amount: always |
| A single transaction for someone who is not a customer | USD/EUR 15,000 |
| A cross-border transfer | A country may set a floor no higher than USD/EUR 1,000 |
| Suspicion, or doubt about earlier data | No amount: always |
These are the standard's own figures, and no country is obliged to repeat them: each writes its own, in its own currency. The amount that matters to you is on the page for the country you are asking in.
What changes when the country changes
How long a check may stay unfinished
Some rulebooks let verification finish after the relationship opens and put an outer limit on it, with suspension and termination written in. Others do not allow it at all.
Whether a refusal has to be explained
The duty to give a reason, and the complaint route behind it, are often written for individuals and small traders. Whether a company sits inside that circle is a local question.
Who may run the errand for you
In some jurisdictions opening or operating an account for someone else is licensed work, and doing it unauthorised is prohibited outright.
Sources: the four measures, the triggers, the designated threshold of USD/EUR 15,000 and the ban on anonymous accounts — recommendation 10 of the international standards, updated October 2021; the beneficial owner — their glossary; the transfer floor — the interpretive note to recommendation 16.
Stages of work
The shortlist, before any application.
We will put your legal form, activity, ownership chain and expected flows against what each bank is currently taking, and name the ones worth an application.
The file the rules actually ask for.
We will assemble what the rules name: the constitution in the form the bank will accept, the address, the countries you work in, officers and signatories, and the purpose of the relationship.
The chain, down to people.
We will map ownership up to the individuals at the top with evidence for each step, and prepare for a bank that looks below the register's line.
Where the money comes from.
Source of funds and source of wealth are separate questions with separate documents. We will write the story and attach the papers that carry it, so the two agree.
Filing, and everything asked afterwards.
Compliance queries arrive one round after another, each with its own deadline. We will answer inside them: an unanswered question closes a file as surely as a bad answer.
If the answer is no.
We will use any reason the bank gives, rebuild the weak part of the file and say plainly whether a complaint route exists where you applied and whether a company may use it.
Our case studies
FAQ
Discuss
the Task
Speak to our team
Speak to our team. Tell us about your task –
we’ll help you with it in any jurisdiction.