Business accounts for startups

Here’s what we need from you:

• Your residential addresses for the past three years
• Details of your other financial arrangements, like mortgages, credit cards and store cards
• The trading address of your business
• Your Companies House registration number, if you have one
• Details about your business, including tax information and turnover
• Details for your directors or partners, including their names, dates of birth, addresses and National Insurance numbers
• Your business registration details, including your date of incorporation if your business is a limited company.

You can see the full list of requirements on the business banking checklist from UK Finance, the UK’s leading trade association for financial services.

When we process your application, we carry out credit and fraud checks on you and your business partners.

These checks take into account your personal and business credit, and anything that might affect your ability to get short-term credit. If your application’s successful, we’ll share information with credit reference agencies about how you manage your account.

After you send your application, we’ll review your application and carry out our checks.

If we approve your application, you’ll get a welcome email before your account is opened. After that, you’ll get a text message to confirm your account is open, followed by a welcome letter in the post.

As part of our checks, we may need to contact you for additional information or clarification on the information you’ve provided.

We aim to start processing all business account applications within seven workings days of receiving them. This could take longer if your business structure is more complex or if we’re receiving more applications than usual.

We’ll update this page with information on any delays, so check here before you apply. If any significant delays happen after you've submitted your application, we’ll get in touch to let you know.

We'll send out your business account details and debit card within seven working days of your account opening.

If you tell us within 14 days of opening your account that you want to cancel or switch to a different account, we’ll refund any account fees that you’ve paid.

The 14 days will start from when you get your Business Customer Agreement or the date your account was opened, whichever comes later. 

Your trading address must be the address where you run your business from. This can’t be a virtual office, a P.O. box, or your accountant’s or solicitor’s address.

If you need to provide proof of your trading address for your application, you can use any one document from this list, as long as it shows your trading address:

• HMRC letter from the last 12 months.
• Letter from an accountant or solicitor on headed paper from the last 3 months (or you can use our letter template [PDF, 347KB]). We can’t accept letters from the Institute of Certified Practicing Accountants (ICPA) or the Certified Public Accountants Association (CPAA).
• Companies House letter dated from the last three months.
• Commercial lease, license or rental agreement, completed and signed by both you and the landlord, and that shows the start and end dates.
• Commercial gas or electricity bill or reminder from the last three months.
• A current liability insurance contract or a non-domestic rate demand from the last 12 months.
• Bank or credit card statement in for an account the name of the business and sent to the trading address in the last three months. We can’t accept statements from Barclays and digital-only banks.
• Letter from regulators, such as the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) or Law Society, relating to your business, from the last three months.