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Internationalwealth.info is the leading portal in the offshore industry. It is not only a reliable source of information about foreign companies and offshore bank accounts but it is also your strategic partner in selecting the personal or corporate foreign bank account that will suit your individual needs. The portal belongs to Offshore Pro Group.
In the modern world, international businesspeople have to look for complex solutions building combinations of offshore – mid-shore – onshore companies and opening several bank accounts in different countries. Those who are after asset diversification and protection sometimes become legal residents of several countries at a time in order to set up accounts with more than one bank. They have to do so because banks all over the world toughen the conditions of opening accounts for non-resident clients. Foreign banks are often prepared to service only super wealthy non-residents who have perfectly transparent business structures.
Whether you are looking to set up a bank account in a tiny insular state or in a reputable Old-World country, you have to take numerous aspects into consideration. We are in cooperation with more than 200 banks and payment systems located all around the world and we know exactly what questions we have to ask you when helping you open a foreign bank account via the Internet. If we understand your needs and your possibilities very well, we can choose the bank or the payment system that is going to serve your purposes best of all.
In an ideal world that is governed by reason, the CLIENT chooses the bank where he or she wants to put the hard-earned money. Unfortunately, the reality is quite the opposite when it comes to banking abroad. It is the foreign BANK that decides if it will or will not service a non-resident client. Banks do not want to put their licenses nor their client bases at risk by letting through an unreliable customer. Bank Presidents and senior Compliance Department officers may even go to jail if they knowingly take a potentially problematic client onboard.
We stay in close contact with all the financial institutions that we work with in order to maximize the efficiency of our services. The process of opening a foreign bank account is hard and time-consuming these days. As the banks experience high pressure on the part of various regulatory bodies, any inaccuracy or obscurity found in the application documents supplied by a non-resident person will automatically lead to service denial.
All foreign banks have lists of qualities that any prospective non-resident client must possess. Offshore Pro Group experts will help you find out where you can set up a personal, corporate, investment, broker’s, or merchant bank account by determining the qualities that you have and those that you lack.
We invite you to obtain a professional consultation from us FREE OF CHARGE. You have to answer a series of questions that are adapted to the international banking standards and requirements. On the basis of your answers to these questions, we will suggest the financial institutions that will fit your purposes and that will be likely to take you onboard.
Serious preparatory work is required if you would like to obtain services from a foreign bank or a PSP (Payment Service Provider). Before your account is activated, you have to go through five stages:
- Choosing the bank that will meet your main requirements. You fill out the questionnaire, we analyze your answers and recommend the banks that correspond to your possibilities such as the amount of capital that you would like to deposit, the confirmation documents that you are able to supply, and the type of business that you have. We will discuss the possible options and make the final decision together.
- Obtaining a preapproval from the bank of your choice. Normally, there will be more than one bank that suits you. We will apply for a preapproval to all of them on your behalf. Then we will continue with whichever bank preapproves your application for services.
- Preparing the application documents that are required by the bank or the PSP where you are going to apply for services. This is the most demanding and time-consuming stage and much will depend on how soon you can supply all the necessary documents to us. We will carefully analyze the application documents that will include both personal documents and corporate documents if you are opening a business account. If your company is (partially) owned by another legal entity, you have to be prepared to supply this entity’s corporate documents as well as personal documents of its owners and directors. We will inspect the application documents exactly in the way that they are going to be inspected by the bank Compliance Department officers. A number of factors need to be taken into account such as the dates of issuance, the signatures, the legibility, the legalization of copies, the expiration dates, the terms of office that the authorized personnel has, and so on and so forth.
- and 5. Completing the bank forms and sending the application document package to the bank. It may sound easy but our experience shows that a great number of nuances play important roles. For example, some company owners confuse company shareholders and company directors when filling out the bank forms. If the bank officer is perplexed when inspecting the documents, service may well be denied to the applicant without any further explanations. For this reason, it is crucially important to work diligently on the application document completion. Sometimes even the ink color matters and sometimes the signature on the document must necessarily be confined within the set limits. We always meticulously check the scanned copies of the documents that the clients send to us. In this way, we save the client’s time and money because if you send the wrong documents, you will have to resend them thus wasting additional time and courier service fees. Most banks will not start the application assessment until all the required documents arrive. If part of your personal or corporate documents are to be sent from a different place, it is important to make sure that all the application documents arrive to the bank simultaneously. We will ascertain that the bank receives all the required documents and keep in touch with it until your account there is set up and activated.
Above we have dwelled only on a few issues that need to be taken into consideration when you are preparing the application documents. Opening a foreign bank account is a true challenge today but with our assistance, it is quite possible to set up a bank account abroad and keep it functional in the future. Moreover, it is not only possible but HIGHLY PROBABLE as well! If you trust our professional experience, you will not have to study these complicated mechanisms. We will take you by the hand and guide you through the whole process. You must remember, however, that the ultimate decision to open (or not to open) an account for you rests with the bank. What you and we can do to influence the bank’s decision is submit the application documents of the kind that the bank officers expect to see. The fewer questions the Compliance Department asks the higher is the quality of the preparatory work.
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Please provide answers to the following questions so that we can suggest the most suitable offshore banks to you:
What type of foreign/ offshore bank account should you open?
There are some fundamental questions that we have to ask you when choosing the most suitable foreign bank for you. First of all, you have to decide if you need a personal bank account, a corporate bank account, or both. Setting up both a personal and a corporate account with the same bank would be a very good idea. The bank is going to love this as it can follow the transactions on both accounts and see if the account holder receives dividend payments, for example.
A personal foreign bank account can be opened online and it can be used to keep and grow your personal capital, to pay the bills, and so on. You can also use it to make private investments into business projects that you are going to participate in.
Sometime it happens that the client applying for our services does not really need a foreign bank account. The way he or she wants to use it will only create problems and entail fines for misdemeanors. When we understand that this is the case indeed, we try our best the talk the client out of establishing a foreign bank account. Yes, we earn nothing from this client but we spare ourselves as well as the client the problems that are going to inevitably arise in the future.
You have to realize that a bank account abroad is always going to come at a higher cost than a bank account in your home country. You also have to be prepared to make the initial deposit and keep the security deposit on the account in the required amount. Of course, a foreign bank account (and better still, two or three foreign bank accounts) will serve the purpose of asset protection very well. But there is a price to pay for it and you have to know it.
An account in a foreign bank can also make you start thinking about lessening your tax burden by changing your tax residency. We will be glad to assist you with this matter too.
A corporate foreign bank account is a mechanism that provides for the successful operations of your business company. When you open a corporate bank account abroad, however, there are numerous details that you have to take care of. One of these details, for example, is the necessity to follow all the rules that offshore businesses have to follow in the jurisdiction where the bank is resident. If you fail to comply with the requirement to pay the company registration extension fee, for instance, your corporate account can be frozen until you submit a fresh Certificate of Good Standing to the bank administration. At the same time, if you do not neglect such requirements, your corporate bank account abroad can serve your business purposes well and also help you protect your capital. Since 2017, banks have been asking clients to supply the financial statements for prior periods. You have to be prepared for that too and if your offshore company does not keep the books yet, it is high time it started doing so! This will improve the image of your company in the eyes of the bank administration and increase your chances to set up a corporate account with the bank of your choice.
People often open corporate bank accounts in foreign countries not only to do business but also to protect their personal capitals from creditors. Some foreign banks still open accounts for holding companies while fully realizing that these are personal assets kept on a corporate account for the sake of higher security. The same is true for a corporate account opened for a foundation or a trust. A corporate bank account abroad can be multifunctional indeed and it can serve the purposes that are most important for every individual entrepreneur.
Keeping your bank account functional
If you would like to set up a corporate account in an offshore bank for the sake of asset protection, that is fine. But what if you need it to carry out your business operations? Then the choice of the jurisdiction where the bank is stationed becomes very important.
If you are looking for a chance to lessen your tax burden in a legal way, in addition to classical offshore jurisdictions, you have to give an eye to mid-shores as well. You have to weigh all pros and contras that each jurisdiction has before you register the company and open a business bank account there. This is why we recommend that you apply for a fee-based consultation on this matter to us.
You can be flexible in structuring your business and establish a combination of an offshore company with an onshore bank or a mid-shore company with an offshore bank. In any case, all banks will have certain requirements to their prospective clients. You will have to supply the most detailed information about your business activities when you try to set up a corporate account in a foreign bank. Any bank will want to know who your main business partners are and what the expected account turnover is at the very beginning of your relationships. You have to remember that the initially declared types of business activity will be monitored constantly and the bank will want to know the purpose and the destination of every payment that you make. Even a small deviation from the initially declared intentions may lead to account freezing or even termination if you fail to notify the bank about an out-of-the-ordinary payment in advance. The currency control limits may also be different depending on the account holder’s nationality, the country of the company domiciliation, and other factors. Banks normally do not disclose the criteria that they use for judgment. The company owner must be ready to supply confirmation documents such as agreements, invoices, etc. as soon as the bank administration requests them.
The same is true for a personal bank account abroad, as a matter of fact. When you put money on your savings account, for instance, the bank may request a confirmation of the legality of your sources of income. It can be a pay stub, a property sale agreement, a royalty payment, a loan certificate, a paid-back loan certificate, and the like. It would be wise to keep all the documents that confirm your money flows as these can help you a lot in case the bank becomes curious how you make and how you spend money.
Should you open an account remotely or on a personal visit?
Offshore Pro Group cooperates with a large number of banks that provide for the opportunity to set up an account from home, without paying a personal visit to the bank. However, as the bank managers are not going to have the pleasure of meeting you in person, they will have to rely on your application documents alone when they deliberate whether to open an account for you or not. For this reason, they are going to take more time to make the decision and may require more documents from you. Besides, they will want the application documents properly legalized.
How long does it take to open a foreign bank account?
The majority of our clients would like to set up a bank account in a foreign country within a couple of days. Some of them want the account opened yesterday. Practice shows, however, that achieving this goal is going to take at least seven to ten days. There are several reasons for that.
First, you have to collect the required application documents, fill out the bank forms and send them to us. We will inspect them carefully and send them to the bank as soon as we ascertain that all the documents are in good order. We work fast but we never submit poorly assembled application document packages to the banks.
Second, every bank will take some time for due diligence checks and the periods can vary from one bank to another. Sometimes it is going to take only a few days while at other times you may have to wait for a couple of weeks. This largely depends upon the workload that the bank Compliance Department has at the time of your application for services.
Third, the account opening period will also depend on how exhaustive your application document package is. If you are applying for a corporate bank account, the information about the company and its prospective financial operations has to be complete. If the bank administration finds that certain documents are missing, they may ask you to supply those or otherwise provide some explanations. The exchange of messages and the delivery of additional documents are going to extend the duration of the account opening process.
Fourth, some banks require that you make the initial deposit before they even start assessing your application documents. All banks have their own requirements as to the amount of the initial deposit and the kind of transaction that you can make. Sometimes the transaction has to be made from a SEPA zone bank, for example, or a SWIFT payment may be required and so on. We will certainly tell you all the details related to making the initial deposit with the bank of your choice when you apply for our assistance with setting up a foreign bank account.
Finally, different banks will have different requirements as to the submission of document originals. In most cases, the bank administration will start considering your application when it receives legalized copies of the documents. At the same time, you may not be able to start using your account until you supply some originals to the bank after your application for services is approved.
Bearing in mind that opening an offshore bank account takes time, you do not want to postpone applying for our services. Please write to info@offshore-pro.info and launch the process straight away!