What you need to apply

The checklist

Everyone needs

• Photo ID — a valid passport or UK photocard driving licence. Expired documents are refused automatically.
• Proof of address — usually a utility bill, council tax bill, mortgage statement or bank statement dated within the last three months.
• Evidence of UK residency for directors and owners.
• A clear description of the business — what it does, who pays it, and roughly how much.
• Expected turnover and expected transaction patterns.

Limited companies also need

• Company registration number and the details exactly as filed at Companies House.
• Details of all directors and persons of significant control, including anyone holding more than a quarter of the shares.
• Registered office and trading address, which may be different.
• Your SIC code, which should genuinely describe what you do.
• VAT registration number if registered.

App-based providers also want

• A selfie video for liveness checking, alongside the photo ID.
• Your National Insurance number in some cases.

What the checks are actually doing

Two things are happening. Know Your Customer verifies that you are who you say you are. Know Your Business verifies that the business is what you say it is, and that the money flowing through it will make sense.

The second is where most applications stall, and it is why the free-text box asking what your business does matters more than people realise. "Consultancy" tells an onboarding team nothing. "IT consultancy for NHS trusts, invoiced monthly on 30-day terms, three or four clients" tells them everything they need, and it makes your incoming payments predictable rather than suspicious.

Prepare before you apply

1. Pull up your Companies House record and read it. Your application must match it exactly — spelling, address, director names, everything.
2. Check your SIC code describes what you actually do. Codes chosen carelessly at incorporation cause declines later. You can change it on the next confirmation statement.
3. Check your ID is in date and the name matches your other documents. Recent name changes need supporting evidence.
4. Find a proof of address that qualifies before you start, not halfway through.
5. Write your business description down in two or three sentences and reuse it.

UK Finance publishes a free "prepare to apply" tool that tailors the requirements to your business type. It is worth ten minutes before you start.

How long it takes

A sole trader applying to an app-based provider can be trading the same day. A limited company at a high-street bank can take one to three weeks, longer if there are overseas directors, an unusual structure, or a sector that requires additional review.

If you are incorporating and opening an account at the same time, allow more time than you think you need. Applications that arrive before the Companies House record has fully updated tend to fail on mismatch.

If your application stalls

Silence usually means a manual review rather than a refusal. Chase politely, ask specifically what further information would help, and provide it in the format requested. Do not open five applications at once — some providers run credit searches, and a cluster of applications is itself a risk signal.

If you are declined, read why applications get declined before reapplying anywhere — and check your SIC code, which causes more refusals than credit history. The full process is in how to open a business bank account.