business bank account

cinek

I need to open up a business account for a start up. My main issue is that there's a 50% shareholder who cannot come to the UK for the next couple of months and we need the account asap. HSBC and Barclays won't open the account until he visits them in person despite the fact that there's a HSBC business branch in his country.

Do I have any other choices? I presume all high street banks will not be happy about the other shareholder not being present. Or should I just amend the details so that the 50% shareholder has 20% of the company and after opening the account change it back to 50?

10pence

cinek wrote: »

I need to open up a business account for a start up. My main issue is that there's a 50% shareholder who cannot come to the UK for the next couple of months and we need the account asap. HSBC and Barclays won't open the account until he visits them in person despite the fact that there's a HSBC business branch in his country.

You could have issues with the nature of the business and home country of the shareholder to satisfy the banks AML rules.
Even if a bank as another branch in another country - such as HSBC, each is legally separate entity that must abide by the laws and rules of that country.

cinek wrote: »

Do I have any other choices? I presume all high street banks will not be happy about the other shareholder not being present. Or should I just amend the details so that the 50% shareholder has 20% of the company and after opening the account change it back to 50?

Been awhile since I've had to deal with business accounts, so double check with an accountant.
In the past, I've recommended to people in similar circumstances to yourself to be a single director/shareholder, open the account and when you can get the other director(s)/shareholder(s) together then add/amend the accounts.

Any changes to directors/shares/shareholders will need to be filed with Companies House. If you're looking at going down the single director route file annual return early to avoid the bank rejecting the account for data mismatching Companies House.

cinek

thanks. He's from EU and there are no issues with the nature of the business (from what HSBC told me). I'll file the annual return early and that should get things moving