Opening a business bank account is the first moment your paperwork gets read by someone with the authority to say no. Up to that point, forms went into portals. Now a person is checking whether your documents agree with each other — and they very often do not.
Here is the list, and then the two failures that account for most rejections.
The six things
The state-stamped formation document
Articles of organization for an LLC, articles of incorporation for a corporation, as returned by the state with its filing stamp or acknowledgment. Not your draft, not the confirmation email. The stamped copy.
The EIN confirmation
The CP 575 notice, or a Letter 147C if you have lost it. Some banks will take a faxed EIN cover sheet; most want something on IRS letterhead.
The governing document
The operating agreement for an LLC, bylaws for a corporation. The bank is reading it for one thing: who is allowed to bind the company. If it is silent on that, expect questions.
Government ID for every signer
Passport or driver’s license for each person who will have access to the account, not only the person opening it. Some banks require every signer to be physically present.
Beneficial ownership information
Name, address, date of birth and an identification number for anyone owning 25% or more, and for the person who controls the company. More on why below, because this is the one people now argue about.
A resolution authorizing the account
A short document recording that the company decided to open the account and naming who may sign. Some banks supply their own form; many will accept yours.
Two more sometimes: a US street address, which a mail-forwarding box may not satisfy, and proof of the business activity — a license, a contract, a website — particularly for a brand-new entity with no history.
Yes, they still ask who owns it
This is the live question of 2026. Beneficial ownership reporting to FinCEN ended for US-formed companies — permanently, by final rule in August 2026. A lot of owners have read that headline and arrive at the bank expecting the ownership questions to be gone.
They are not, because they were never the same requirement.
Two different rules, one of which never changed
Reporting to FinCEN was an obligation on your company. Collecting ownership information at account opening is an obligation on the bank, under the Customer Due Diligence rule at 31 CFR 1010.230. That rule has not been amended since 2017 — and the Corporate Transparency Act expressly forbids the Treasury Secretary from repealing it.
So the bank has no discretion here, and telling the teller that BOI was repealed will not help. One genuine change did arrive in February 2026: if you are already a customer and you are opening an additional account, the bank may now rely on the ownership information it already has, as long as you confirm it is still accurate. That is why a second account is usually so much easier than the first.
Failure one: the name does not match
This is the single commonest rejection and it is entirely preventable. The name on the state filing, the name on the EIN notice, and the name on the account application all have to be the same string of characters.
“Northside Property Group LLC” and “Northside Property Group, LLC” are the same company to you and two different names to a compliance system. So are “L.L.C.” and “LLC”, and so is a name with the comma dropped. If the EIN was applied for before the state approved the formation — or with a slightly different name typed in a hurry — you will find out at the bank counter.
Check the three documents against each other at your kitchen table, not at the branch. It takes two minutes and it is the highest-yield two minutes in this entire process.
Failure two: signing as an office you do not have
This one catches LLCs specifically, and it catches them because of a document that was written for corporations.
The resolution authorizing a bank account is a corporate form by tradition. It refers to a board of directors approving it and a corporate secretary certifying it. An LLC has no board and, in Florida, no required secretary — so a member who signs the resolution as “Secretary” has certified an office that the state’s record of the company does not show. A careful banker will reject it, and they are right to.
For an LLC, the resolution should say that the members or the managers adopted it, depending on how the company is managed, and it should be certified by one of them in that capacity. Nothing else about the document needs to change.
Bring the operating agreement even if nobody asks for it
It is the document that proves the person signing has authority. When the bank’s questions get specific — and with a new entity they usually do — the operating agreement is what ends the conversation. Turning up without one turns a twenty-minute appointment into a second appointment.
If you are not in the United States
Everything above applies, plus three practical realities. Many banks require at least one signer to appear in person, and policies differ so sharply between institutions that it is worth asking before you book a flight. A mail-forwarding address may not be accepted as the business address — and if you use a commercial mail receiving agency, you will need to have signed USPS Form 1583 with photo ID and proof of address before they can lawfully hand you mail at all. And the entity needs an EIN, but you personally do not need an ITIN to obtain one.
The one thing that consistently helps: walk in with more paper than you were asked for. A complete folder gets a decision on the day. A partial one gets you a list.
Sources
- Beneficial ownership collection by banks: 31 CFR 1010.230, current in the eCFR as of September 2026, last amended 2017; the non-repeal provision is Corporate Transparency Act s. 6403(d). FinCEN’s exceptive-relief order on repeat verification is dated 13 February 2026.
- End of BOI reporting for US-formed companies: FinCEN final rule, 91 FR 52508, published and effective 14 August 2026.
- USPS Form 1583 requirement for commercial mail receiving agencies: 39 CFR Part 111 / Domestic Mail Manual 508.1.8.
- Checked 9 September 2026. Bank document requirements are set by each institution and vary; the items above are what is asked for most consistently, not a legal minimum.