Bank Account Opening

Overview

A bank account is not an administrative formality attached to incorporation. It is a separate application to a separate institution which applies its own risk criteria and reaches its own decision.

What the institution examines is broader than the company. It looks at the beneficial owner and their background, the source of funds and the source of wealth, the business model and where its revenue comes from, the counterparties involved, and whether the company has a coherent presence in Cyprus or exists only on paper.

That last point connects account opening to the substance position. An institution reviewing a company with no local administration, no resident directors and no discernible Cyprus activity is looking at the same weakness a tax authority would, and tends to reach a similar conclusion about it.

Applications are most often delayed by files that are incomplete, internally inconsistent, or that describe a business differently from how the company's own documents describe it.

What is included

• Assessment of which institutions suit the business model, jurisdictions and expected flows
• Preparation of the corporate file: constitutional documents, registers, ownership chain and structure chart
• Beneficial owner documentation: identity, address, source of funds and source of wealth
• A business description consistent with the company's activity, contracts and expected transactions
• Supporting evidence for expected counterparties, revenue sources and transaction volumes
• Submission management and response to the institution's follow-up questions
• Coordination between the bank's requirements and the company's governance arrangements
• Mandate and signatory arrangements, with authority limits agreed
• EMI alternatives where a traditional bank is not the right fit or timing requires it
• Support with periodic reviews once the account is operating

How Doviandi approaches this

We prepare the file before approaching anyone. A submission that generates three rounds of follow-up questions takes considerably longer than one that anticipates them. Most of the work happens before the first contact with an institution.

The description matches the documents. Applications fail on inconsistency more than on substance. If the business description, the constitutional objects, the contracts and the expected flows tell slightly different stories, the institution reads that as a reason to decline.

We match the institution to the business. Not every bank wants every profile, and a well-prepared application to the wrong institution still fails. Directing a technology business with international receipts to an institution comfortable with that pattern saves months.

We do not promise approval. The decision belongs to the institution and we have no influence over it. What we control is the completeness and coherence of what it receives, and where we think a profile will struggle we say so before the application rather than after.

Related knowledge

Background reading on the questions this service answers:

• Administrative Service Provider on the due diligence obligations that produce much of the same file.
• Can foreigners own a Cyprus company? on beneficial ownership disclosure and what foreign owners actually encounter.
• Economic Substance on the local presence institutions look for alongside tax authorities.