The company was open. The bank account wasn't.
A UK business owner with a company in IFZA. No bank would open an account for it until we changed the activity on the licence to match what the business actually does.
Speak to us about your situationThe situation
Alan's company was already set up — licence issued, visas done. On paper it was finished. But months in, he still couldn't get a bank account open, and without one the company couldn't trade.
Why they came to us
He'd spoken to us first, then set the company up himself to save a little. A couple of months later he came back, stuck: the licence existed, but no bank would open an account and he couldn't see why.
Doing it himself had left him with months in which the company couldn't trade. He'd already spoken to us once, and we were who he came back to.
What we recommended
Not a different bank. We reviewed the structure against what the business actually did, and the activity on the licence didn't describe the real business — so when the bank looked at the company, it couldn't tell what it was being asked to bank. If he'd gone to another bank with the same licence, that bank would have been reading the same thing.
The activity matters because it is the line on a licence that says what the company does, and a bank reads the licence against the business in front of it. IFZA, the free zone Alan's company is in, has a range of business activities a company can be licensed for, and it says on its own website, "Getting the right license is vital for starting a business in Dubai."
Usually a refused UAE bank account comes down to how the business is described, so the first thing we look at is the licence: at Start Business Services we change the activity to say what the business actually does before anyone goes back to the bank. It isn't always the licence, which is why we read it against the real business before we change anything.
We changed the activity to match what Alan actually does, prepared the supporting documents and a clear explanation of the business, and went back to the bank. The rest of what a bank looks at before it opens an account is on our page about how to open a UAE business bank account.
The outcome
The account opened. Alan went on to open two more companies with us — both in the RAKEZ free zone, one for him and one for his wife — and a holding company in RAKICC, and we handle the ongoing side now.
They've helped across all areas of creating a series of companies in Dubai that would have been impossible without them. They even stepped in to unwind the errors in my UAE company structures that I had tried to create without their guidance. Straight talking, genuinely knowledgeable and do what they say they will.
— Alan
Where to read next
How to open a UAE business bank account
Case study: choosing the right bank for a new UAE business
Case study: taking over a UAE branch that wasn't getting done
Sources: the licence types and the business activities a company can be licensed for are published by the free zone itself, IFZA for a company licensed there.
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