BBL - Now what?

[Wantinglegaladvice]

For some background we bank with Tide. Obviously they ran out of money to lend do no luck there (primary bank). Opened an account with Sterling Bank, again no luck either (seem to be stuck pending), probably because we aren't an established business. Lloyds was the bank for my other business but they aren't opening new accounts.

HSBC seem to be taking absolutely ages to open accounts and our application for an HSBC Kinetic account was just declined and have said if we applied via the website they can't proceed with a normal business account either. Same with Metro.

So now what? We should qualify for this but are getting nowhere. Our only hope is a feeder account is approved with HSBC or is it worth having a conversation to see if Lloyds will open a business account over the phone?

Any advice appreciated

 

[jimbof]

Opened an account with Sterling Bank, again no luck either (seem to be stuck pending)

Is it the account opening, or the BBLS, that is stuck pending?
I don't have a Starling BBLS, but did recently move to Starling. The account was in a "pending" state for around 5 days.

I have a BBLS with Metrobank which was pretty painless (<2 days from application to funds). However I had been banking and obviously running a legit enterprise for almost 2 years prior. Don't know how they treat new accounts. I think Metrobank are still opening accounts (which is a pre-requisite - no feeder etc options - you must bank with Metro), though you may actually have to visit branch to open account.

I am in the process of moving away from Metrobank though as they don't have good banking feed integration anymore with my accounts software (Freeagent) - so if that is important to you day-to-day then that may be an issue. I couldn't recommend them wholeheartedly for that reason, but on the BBLS they came up with the goods for me.