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Comment by middayc | Hacker News Reader

I was already filling the form for UK formation, when colleague from UK appointed me that "fast fwd bank account" means only that they will pass papers to them, not that I get BA. Then I started calling banks in UK, I called 4 of them, answers were different, but bottom line you can't open account if you don't have UK passport (even if company is in UK). Only one answer was that I could open it, but if I come to one of their offices.

I focused back on US because one of advisors is from US and bizfillings seems to have nice prices / service. UK also had few nice online services for company formation.

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you can't open account if you don't have UK passport (even if company is in UK)

That's complete BS. I (and others) run a Ltd company in the UK and none of us have UK or EU passports. Our company has a bank account with HSBC.

We are all residents in the UK though, which may be what's different for your situation.

That was the wording used by one nice lady on the telephone. (and I think you had to be member of some small biz uk "community")

- Another one asked if any officer in firm is from UK.

- Third said I can open account if I came to their office.

- Fourth I don't remember but was one of the above

I didn't call to HSBC, I saw on some forum someone opened account with them and later got some problems (that was in US) so I didn't look at them yet.

If you go through an accountant in the UK to create a company they used to be able to help arrange bank accounts - that may no longer be valid. If no one is resident in the UK (you certainly don't have to have a passport, I have 2 personal bank accounts and 3 business accounts and no passport) then you may have a problem.

I have only just started looking into this, but you may find you can open a company in Jersey or Isle of Man. I think you can do this remotely and get a bank account etc. Also if you are an EU citizen then you might want to try Ireland.

I'm sure you can appreciate why countries don't make it easy for non residents to do these things, and you may find it a lot easier to set up in your own home country until you can actually afford a presence in another country.

> you may find it a lot easier to set up in your own home country

It's often ridiculously expensive to have a real, limited liability company in many continental European countries. For instance, in Italy, you're supposed to have 10K euro of capital (although you can get away with less), not to mention pretty much mandatory fees for accountants, notary public, and so on.

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