I would appreciate some advice on opening a business account.

Myself and a group of other people have just set up a cooperative. It is a not for profit organisation and we are a registered cooperative with FSA. We desperately need to open a bank account in the cooperatives registered name in order to meet the requirements of potential funders.

However we were declined by the cooperative bank (irony!) and I need some advice before applying to other banks in case we jeopardise our chances of acceptance. I think that I am the problem because as a result of a recent bereavement I'm not on the electoral role (I moved in with my sister for almost a year and I forgot about filling in the form when I moved into my new place). I suspect that my credit isn't good anyway.

Is it possible to just have 2 other members as signatories on the bank account or would that make no difference ?

Is it easier to get a Community bank account ?

We need to have 2 signatories for withdrawals so I'm not sure if something like cashplus would meet funders requirements. We don't need/want borrowing facilities, just an account where money can be payed into and we can operate the cooperative. Advice please ?

Hi,

Just thought I'd let people know that we have succeeded in getting a Treasurers Account at Nationwide. Obviously it helped that we are Not for Profit and not everyone can go down that road.

We opened our Recovery Cafe recently (for people with drug and alcohol problems) and we had a celebrity visitor yesterday which was amazing. I wanted to let people know that if you persevere you can succeed !

Would it be possible to open as a personal account until you get established? I know alot of Credit Unions would love to have that kinda of transactional activity. Just a thought

Hi MyCreditUnions,

You seem to be posting on a lot of old threads, I very much doubt you will get any answers from the original posters.

Regards,

Scott.