BVI company opens Puerto Rico corporate bank account

Since 2003, Healy Consultants assists Clients with company setup in Puerto Rico, including i) company registration and provision of company secretary and legal registered office services ii) corporate bank account opening and iii) Puerto Rico accounting and tax services, if required.

In this case, our Client is an investment company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands (BVI). The Company’s activities include proprietary investments in stocks, foreign currencies and derivatives. The Client engaged us to open a corporate bank account for that entity.

Engagement Planning

• In November 2020, our Client settled our international corporate bank account opening fees and our Group Financial Controller Ms. Sharon emailed our Client with an updated invoice confirming this.
• Our former colleague Alvin was assigned to assist our Client with the international corporate bank account opening for the BVI entity.
• Thereafter, he sent the Client a detailed email including i) an overview of the international corporate bank account opening project plan ii) key engagement milestones, including challenges.
• Alvin also prepared and presented a draft business plan for our Client’s review and approval. The business plan includes details such as i) our Client’s business activities ii) bank account expectations and iii) projections of incoming and outgoing transfers, and the plan is submitted to the bank during the account opening application. A quality business plan increases the likelihood of successful account opening.

Corporate bank account opening

• Initially, Healy Consultants Group applied for the bank account for our Client’s BVI company with a bank in Malaysia. As the last step of the process, the Client travelled to the bank’s Singapore branch to meet the bank officers. Thereafter, the application, along with all documents, was couriered to Malaysia.
• Unfortunately, the Bank eventually declined the application at the final stage, after taking around four months to revert due to the Covid-19 restrictions in Malaysia at that time.
• We then sourced another solution. Because the company is registered in BVI, it is viewed as high risk to banks, who negatively perceive it as a tax neutral jurisdiction. This was a major challenge.
• However, our team eventually found a solution in Puerto Rico, where a bank confirmed its interest in onboarding our Client’s BVI company.
• The bank performed extensive due diligence checks during the onboarding process. However, within two months of us lodging the account opening application, the bank released account numbers to our Client.

Engagement completion

• Having released account numbers, the Puerto Rico bank shared e-banking activation instructions with our Client.
• We sent our Client confirmation that the engagement was complete. This included the updated engagement summary, paid invoice and e-banking user manual.
• The Client thanked Healy Consultants’ team for our persistence in opening an account in the face of the original application being rejected at the final stage.
• Healy Consultant’s Business Website Department has also requested a professional reference from our Client.