Opening a company bank account in Oman

Two laws stand behind a company account here. The Banking Law of 2025 replaced the one that had governed banking since 2000 and came into force on the first day of that year; the law on combating money laundering and terrorism financing sits beside it, and the central bank's guidance turns both into a list of things the file must contain. Almost all of that list is about one question: who is behind the company.

What else the country involves is on the Oman page, and the same service elsewhere is under bank account opening.

The chart the bank asks you to draw

Guidance asks for a detailed explanation or a company structure chart showing every holding of 25% or more. The chart has to pass through all the intermediate entities on the way — other companies, legal arrangements, individuals holding as nominees — until it reaches the people who ultimately own or control the applicant. A bank works down the chart layer by layer, and a layer it cannot see is a layer it will ask about.

When nobody reaches a quarter

Where several entities each hold less than 25%, the guidance does not treat that as the end of the matter. A bank is asked to consider whether those entities are related by common ownership, because holdings that are connected can reach the threshold once they are added together. Political exposure is established whatever the size of the holding, so a small stake held by a public figure still has to be declared.

A second chart, about who decides

Ownership is only half of what goes into the profile. The guidance also asks for an explanation or chart of the internal management structure, naming the people in senior positions or otherwise in control, together with information about the majority-owned or controlled operating subsidiaries — what those subsidiaries do and where they do it. Two different charts, and a bank reads both.

The sums that trigger a check

How long the file outlives the account

The file survives the account by a decade: ten years from the end of the business relationship, and the same ten years from a single transaction done for a person who never became a client. Competent authorities may require longer. The practical consequence is that the explanation given at opening has to be one the company can still stand behind a decade later, which is an argument for describing the business plainly rather than favourably.

An account that stops being used

The central bank leaves the dormancy period to each bank's own policy and suggests two years without operation as the point at which a running account is treated that way. Banks may choose a shorter period. Interest continues to accrue, charges stay within the permitted ceiling, and a balance in an inactive account may not be taken to a bank's income. Reactivation needs authorisation at a named level.

Sources: ownership charts, the 25% threshold, the OMR 5,000 and OMR 350 figures and the ten-year retention — the central bank's AML/CFT guidelines; dormancy — circular BM 1045 in the booklet of circulars.