Corporate banking
When an account is frozen, closed or de-risked
Banks exit customers, sometimes with no explanation and little notice. It is rarely personal, it is often sectoral, and what you do in the first week matters more than anything after.
The reality
What the bank is actually deciding.
De-risking is a bank deciding that a customer, or a whole category of customer, presents more regulatory work than the relationship is worth. It happens with little notice and usually without a stated reason, and it has affected entire sectors at different points — money services, precious metals, general trading, crypto — regardless of whether individual customers had done anything wrong. A freeze is different: it is generally a temporary hold pending a specific query, and it is usually resolved by answering that query properly.
What you do first determines how bad it gets. The instinct is to argue with the relationship manager, who cannot help, and to move money quickly, which looks exactly like what a bank freezing an account is worried about. The productive sequence is different: establish in writing whether this is a freeze pending information or a closure decision, ask what information is required and supply it completely, and simultaneously begin opening an account elsewhere, because a company without banking cannot pay salaries and a WPS failure creates a second problem with MOHRE within a month. Treat it as two parallel tasks rather than one negotiation.
What gets asked for
- Freeze
- Usually temporary, pending specific information
- Closure
- A commercial decision the bank is entitled to make
- Notice
- Often short — sometimes weeks
- Reason
- Rarely given, and the bank is generally not obliged to
- Knock-on
- WPS failure within a month means a MOHRE problem too
- Funds
- Generally returned, but timing can be slow
Where the time goes
The file
What to put in front of them.
- Establish in writing what is actually happeningA hold pending information is a different problem from a decision to exit. Ask, and get the answer in writing.
- Answer the query completely, oncePartial answers produce further rounds and further delay. Supply everything at once.
- Start a second banking relationship immediatelyIn parallel, not afterwards. This is the step people delay while they argue, and it is the one that protects the business.
- Protect payroll firstWPS non-payment triggers MOHRE consequences that outlast the banking problem. Arrange an alternative route for salaries before anything else.
- Fix whatever attracted the attentionIf it was an activity mismatch, an unexplained corridor or a structural layer, fix it — the next bank will see the same thing.
Related
Questions
Most often de-risking — a decision about a category of customer rather than about you specifically. Banks are generally not obliged to explain.
A freeze pending information usually resolves when the information is supplied completely. A closure decision is much harder to reverse.
It is generally returned, though timing varies and can be slow where the underlying query is unresolved.
Usually yes, provided you have addressed whatever triggered it. Approaching the next bank with the identical profile tends to produce the identical outcome.
One question
Where will the money actually come from?
Then the account is a cross-border file, and the compliance question is which countries and in which currencies. Name the corridors in the application rather than waiting to be asked — an unexplained payment from a jurisdiction the bank did not expect is what freezes accounts in month three.
What the file has to containOr just ask usThen substance is the question rather than geography. A local trading history, an Ejari and a customer list make this straightforward; a flexi-desk with no domestic contracts yet is where onboarding slows, and the fix is evidence rather than a different bank.
Why applications get declinedOr just ask usThen source of wealth carries the file, and 'savings' is not an answer. A share sale agreement, a property disposal, audited accounts from an overseas company or a series of tax returns are. Assemble that before the first meeting, not after the first question.
Evidencing source of fundsOr just ask us