The Five-Point Checklist for Global Banking Access

Whether a business can get a bank account is mostly decided before the company even exists: when you choose where to set it up, who runs it and how it's structured.

These are the five points we've seen decide it, over years of working in global structuring and in banking. They're how banks actually think. Understand them and you can judge whether a business will be bankable before you commit to a jurisdiction, instead of finding out afterwards.

No one can promise what a bank will decide. But a business that gets these five points right starts with far more banks willing to say yes.

1. Know where your people are

The first question isn't about the company at all. It's about the people behind it.

• Where is the owner based?
• Where do the directors live?
• Where are the shareholders?

A bank asks all three. The directors run the company and operate the account. The shareholders, especially anyone holding a significant stake (usually 25% or more), are the beneficial owners the bank has to identify and verify. The bank is taking on a relationship with every one of them, not just with the company. If they're spread across several countries, it has to be comfortable with each of those countries.

This is why geography comes first. It decides which jurisdictions are realistic before anything else comes in.

Take a company formed in the UK, owned and run by someone who lives in the UK. For banking, that's about as easy as it gets. Company, owner and bank are all in the same place, and there's nothing unusual to explain.

Keep the same company but move the owner to Japan. Nothing about the business has changed, yet the options narrow sharply. Most UK banks are set up to serve UK residents, and many won't onboard a company whose only director and shareholder lives on the other side of the world.

Region counts as well as country. A Japanese resident setting up in Hong Kong is in a very different position. Hong Kong is in the same region, has deep commercial ties with Japan, and has providers that routinely bank Hong Kong companies owned from elsewhere in Asia. The same person, with the same business, gets far more options because the jurisdiction suits where they are.

So start by mapping where everyone is. Geography also isn't always fixed: who is appointed as a director, and where they live, can be decided on purpose to open up more banking options.

2. Choose a jurisdiction you have a real connection to

Once it's clear where the people are, the company should ideally be set up somewhere it has a genuine connection to: where the owners live, where the customers are, or where the business actually operates.

What banks don't like is a company that exists in one place, is owned from a second, and trades in a third, with nothing linking them.

Take someone living in Japan who sets up a Panama company. There may be good commercial reasons for it. On paper, though, the company is registered in Panama and everyone behind it is in Japan. Appointing a director in Panama changes that picture. The company now has a real presence in the jurisdiction it belongs to, and someone there who is responsible for it.

That presence is what banks mean by substance: real people, real activity or a real office in the place the company says it's from. Banks look for it because a company with no substance anywhere is hard to hold accountable. If something goes wrong, it's unclear where the company actually sits, whose laws and regulators apply, and who can be reached to answer for it. A bank that can't answer those questions will usually decline rather than take the risk.

Substance has to be real to count. A director appointed only to put a local name on the paperwork, with no actual role in the company, adds little. Banks are increasingly good at telling the difference, and a nominee arrangement can raise more questions than it answers.

3. Keep the ownership structure simple

It's common to put a company under a holding company, and sometimes that holding company under another one. Each layer may have a purpose. For a bank, though, every layer is a whole new company to check. For each entity in the chain it needs:

• the company documents
• who owns it
• who the directors are
• identification for every person connected to it
• what that entity does and why it's there

A company owned directly by one person is one set of checks. The same company owned through two holding companies in two more jurisdictions is three sets of checks, in three legal systems, before the bank even reaches the people at the top. Banks weigh that effort against what the relationship is worth. A complex structure moving significant volumes may justify it. A complex structure behind a small or new business usually doesn't.

Complexity on its own is a burden. Complexity that seems to have no purpose is a warning sign. Picture a company owned by a holding company, which is owned by a foundation. The director lives in a country connected to none of them, and every entity is in a jurisdiction with limited public registers or a place on international watch lists. Each piece may be lawful. Together they look designed to make it hard to see who is behind the business, which is exactly the question a bank most needs answered.

Several things go wrong at once:

• Ownership is harder to verify. Some jurisdictions keep registers private, so the bank can't confirm the real owners from its own checks.
• Accountability is harder to establish. With no substance anywhere, it's unclear which jurisdiction's laws and authorities would apply if something went wrong.
• Fewer banks will look at it. Many institutions limit their exposure to certain jurisdictions. A structure built entirely from them starts with a much smaller pool of banks.

The answer isn't to avoid these jurisdictions entirely. They have legitimate uses, and holding structures often make sense. The answer is to build around an anchor: at least one well-established jurisdiction at the centre, where the company has real substance, with other entities around it, each with a clear role.

The practical rule: every layer should be there for a reason that can be explained in a sentence. If it can't, it probably isn't worth what it costs in banking.

4. Match the jurisdiction to the industry

Some industries are harder to bank than others. Fewer institutions serve them, and those that do look more closely at everything else in the file. Some jurisdictions are the same: fewer banks work with them, and those that do apply more scrutiny.

Each of these narrows the pool of banks. Put both together and the pool shrinks drastically. A company in a hard-to-bank industry, incorporated in a jurisdiction few banks work with, is asking an institution to accept two difficult things at once. Very few will.

It helps to think of it as a budget. A bank will only accept so much that is unusual in a single file, and every point on this checklist draws on that same budget. The skill is in deciding where to spend it.

Harder-to-bank industry: spend nothing on the jurisdiction. If the industry is one banks are cautious about, everything else should be as solid as possible:

• a well-established, reputable jurisdiction
• real substance there, with people on the ground
• a simple ownership structure
• clear evidence that this is a real, operating business

The aim is for the bank to see that, although the industry is one it treats carefully, everything else about the company is easy to understand.

Straightforward industry: there's more room. A business in an ordinary, well-understood industry has budget to spare. It can consider a jurisdiction that fewer banks work with, or a slightly more involved structure, and still land comfortably within what banks will accept. The flexibility is real but not unlimited.

5. Be able to show how the business actually works

The first four points are about how the company is set up. The last is about proving it's a real business, and being able to describe how money moves through it.

A bank wants to understand the company's operations in practical terms:

• Who the customers are and where they are.
• What currencies come in and go out, and roughly how much, how often.
• Who the company pays, and in which countries.
• Why the flows look the way they do.

A company that invoices local clients in the local currency is simple to understand. A company that collects from customers in several countries and pays suppliers somewhere else can be entirely sound, but the flows have to make sense to someone reading them for the first time.

Then comes the evidence. For an established business, that usually means invoices, contracts and statements that match what the application says. For a new business with no trading history yet, it means a working website, a clear business plan, and contracts or letters of intent from the first customers or suppliers. The owners' own background matters too: banks increasingly ask where the money behind the business came from.

The most common weakness here is vagueness. "Consulting" or "trading" with no further detail invites questions. A specific description of what the company sells, to whom and how, removes them.

The checklist

Before the company is formed:

1. Map the people. Where do the owners, directors and shareholders live, and where are they likely to be?
2. Choose a jurisdiction with a real connection. Pick one the company has genuine links to, and plan the substance it will have there.
3. Keep the structure as simple as the business allows. Every layer needs a purpose that can be stated in a sentence, built around an established anchor.
4. Match the jurisdiction to the industry. The harder the industry is to bank, the more solid everything else needs to be.
5. Prepare the evidence. Know the customers, currencies and flows, and have the documents that prove them.

Only then form the company, with the banking answer already known rather than hoped for. Done in this order, the company and the account can often be set up together, with the same documents supporting both.

If the company already exists

For a company already formed somewhere that doesn't fit, the options are usually to:

• match the file to an institution whose appetite suits it
• adjust the structure, for example the directors or the ownership chain
• in some cases, move or re-form the company

One thing is worth avoiding while that gets sorted out: routing the company's revenue through a personal account or an unrelated third party. It creates flows that later have to be explained to the very institutions being approached, and it causes problems well beyond banking.

Where we sit

Redomiciled works with a network of independent lawyers, accountants and advisers across multiple jurisdictions. Much of what we do happens before incorporation: working through exactly this checklist so that a company is formed with banking in mind.

We coordinate formation through licensed local providers. We are not a bank, we do not hold client funds, and we cannot guarantee any outcome. Acceptance always rests with the institution concerned and is subject to its own due diligence. Nothing here is legal, tax or accounting advice, and the specifics of any structure should be confirmed with a qualified adviser in the relevant jurisdiction.