Foreign Bank Accounts

Mistero Group assists with opening bank accounts with banks in Austria, Canada, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom, as well as with offshore banks and licensed payment service providers.

Account opening has become the hardest part of any international business. Banks now decline far more applications than they accept, and they decline them after weeks of reviewing documents. Our value is largely in knowing, before an application is made, which institutions will look seriously at a given business and which will not.

Types of accounts we assist with opening

Corporate accounts

Accounts for operating companies, holding entities and offshore companies.

Where a business has several income streams or several jurisdictions involved, we will say whether one account is realistic or whether the structure requires banking with more than one bank or payment service provider.

Personal accounts

Accounts in foreign banks for individuals for personal savings, asset holding or property purchase.

Requirements differ substantially from those applicable to corporate onboarding, particularly in the level of source-of-wealth evidence expected.

Payment service providers

Licensed payment service providers are frequently a workable alternative where a traditional bank will not proceed, or where the client needs multi-currency accounts and faster onboarding. These providers are not banks, and there are differences compared with banks in deposit protection, permitted activities and the stability of the relationship. We set them out before you commit.

How to choose a bank

The right question is rarely “what bank is the best”. The question is which bank will accept 1) this particular business, 2) with these particular owners, and 3) with this particular pattern of payments — and continue to do so once the account is opened.

We work through:

• the bank’s actual willingness to work with your type of business and your countries of operation;
• the level of substance the bank expects the company to demonstrate;
• tariffs, minimum balances and the true cost of holding an account;
• how the bank operates once onboarding is complete — whether there are any payment delays, sudden reviews or account closures.

For each institution we recommend, you receive our detailed comments on the bank itself, its tariffs, and our own experience of working with it. That last point is what a comparison table cannot give you.

Bank peculiarities

Every jurisdiction has its own character. Swiss and Liechtenstein banks expect scale and a clear source of wealth. Cyprus rebuilt its banking sector after 2013 and applies compliance rules that surprise clients who remember how it once worked. Baltic banks reduced their non-resident business substantially after the events of 2018. Hong Kong is demanding on substance but strong on trade finance.

Knowing where the friction sits is what turns a rejected application into an approved one.

What determines the outcome

In our experience, applications succeed or fail on four things:

1. A business the bank can understand. A clear, ordinary commercial story is in all cases better than a complicated structure.
2. Documentary consistency. Contracts, invoices and ownership documents that tell the same story without contradiction.
3. Source of funds evidence. Documented, traceable and proportionate to the sums involved.
4. Substance. Real presence where the company claims to be — increasingly the point on which marginal cases turn.

We prepare the file with the bank’s own reviewer in mind, and we will tell you in advance if we believe a case is unlikely to succeed. It is a more useful answer than a failed application three months later.