Corporate Brokerage Accounts for Non-Resident Companies: What IBKR, EXANTE and Saxo Actually Require

Brokers rarely refuse a corporate brokerage account for a non-resident company because the company is foreign. They refuse because the file is incomplete: no current registry extract, an unexplained beneficial owner, nominee or bearer shares, no corporate bank account to fund from. IBKR, EXANTE and Saxo each publish what they want. Here is what that list actually means.

Scope: this article works through the EU/EEA framework — MiFID II (Directive 2014/65/EU) and the EU anti-money-laundering Directive (EU) 2015/849 — because that is the regime under which these three houses onboard most corporate clients. Saxo Bank A/S is a Danish credit institution supervised by the Danish FSA; the EXANTE brokers are licensed individually by the FCA, MFSA, CySEC and SFC; IBKR publishes a separate corporate document list for Europe alongside its US, Canadian and Japanese lists. A comparison of the equivalent instruments in the UK, US, Hong Kong and Ukraine appears near the end.

What “non-resident company” means to a broker

“Non-resident” collapses two separate questions that a compliance team keeps apart. The first is where the entity is incorporated and tax resident. The second is where its directors and ultimate beneficial owners live. A Cyprus company owned by a Ukrainian founder living in Warsaw is three jurisdictions in one file, and each of them is screened independently.

The incorporation question is less fatal than founders assume. Interactive Brokers publishes an Available Countries and Territories list for account opening that includes the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Seychelles, Belize, Panama, the Marshall Islands, Curaçao and Saint Kitts and Nevis. Classic offshore jurisdictions are on the list. What is absent is a different category altogether — sanctioned and high-risk states, which simply do not appear.

What offshore incorporation does change is the evidential burden. In IBKR’s US small-business document list, the requirement to produce a further financial-institution account statement applies specifically to “organizations and trusts that have been formed in or are located in countries that are not full members of the Financial Action Task Force”. Being incorporated outside the FATF membership is not a refusal; it is an extra document, and one you cannot produce if the company has never held an account anywhere.

What IBKR, EXANTE and Saxo each ask for

All three publish their corporate requirements. The lists are more different than the marketing suggests.

Three lines in that table do most of the damage.

The 20% threshold

Directive (EU) 2015/849 treats “a shareholding of 25% plus one share” as the indication of direct ownership, and expressly preserves the right to apply a lower percentage. IBKR’s European list does exactly that, requiring the full identity, address, source-of-wealth and ownership-proof package for every natural person at 20% or more, and a complete corporate pack for corporate shareholders at the same level. A cap table built to sit just under 25% does not survive that.

The latest financial statement

Saxo asks for the latest financial statement and, for entities inside complex groups, a group structure diagram. A company incorporated three months ago has neither. That is solvable, but only by substituting something — opening balance sheet, funding resolution, signed group chart — rather than leaving the field empty.

The LEI

Every entity trading reportable instruments in the EU needs a Legal Entity Identifier. This is not broker preference: Article 13(2) of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2017/590 prohibits an investment firm from providing a service that triggers a transaction-reporting obligation “prior to obtaining the legal entity identifier code from that client”. No LEI, no trade. EXANTE will obtain one for you for EUR 90, renewable at EUR 70.

Source of funds for a newly incorporated holding company

This is where clean structures fail. EXANTE’s published source-of-funds matrix recognises five corporate origins, each with its own evidence: income from business activities (audited financial statements, or the full cycle of contracts, invoices and account statements proving realised profit); investment or trading profit (a statement from a regulated financial institution showing realised gains); a real-estate sale; a company sale; and dividends (audited statements or a board resolution, plus the bank statement showing the transfer).

A holding company incorporated this year has none of those. Its money came from its shareholder, so the file is not a corporate source-of-funds file at all — it is the shareholder’s source-of-wealth file, routed through a documented capital contribution or loan. IBKR’s European list asks in parallel for a “description of the origin of your financial standing or total net worth” from every 20%+ owner. Build that narrative first and the corporate layer becomes paperwork.

One helpful detail for new entities: EXANTE’s six-month document rule “does not apply to companies established in the current calendar year”, with refreshed documents requested the following year. A company incorporated in January is not disqualified by having a founding-day certificate.

Offshore entity versus EU entity: where the file diverges

An Estonian OÜ and a BVI BC submit the same categories of document. They fail in different places.

• Bearer shares. EXANTE states plainly that it does “not provide services to the companies who issue bearer shares.” If the constitutional documents merely permit them, expect to amend them before onboarding.
• Nominee shareholders. Where a nominee appears on the register, EXANTE requires the trust declaration or trust deed plus proof of identity and residence for the true beneficial owner. A nominee arrangement is not a privacy device in front of a broker; it is an extra document set.
• Corporate directors and corporate shareholders. EXANTE requires a complete corporate document set for each such layer, and IBKR requires proof of existence, address and ownership for every corporate shareholder at 20%+. A three-tier structure means three packs, and the timeline multiplies accordingly.
• Registered office versus real office. UK money-laundering law makes the distinction explicit — regulation 28(3) of the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 requires the firm to obtain and verify the registered office address “and if different, its principal place of business”. Saxo asks for exactly that document. A shell whose only address is its registered agent’s has nothing to file.
• Passive entities and tax residence. EXANTE requires the tax number of the entity and, for a passive non-financial entity, the tax number and tax residence of every controlling person. A holding company that exists to hold assets is passive by design, so plan for the controlling persons to be reported.

If you are still choosing the vehicle, the jurisdiction decision and the account decision should be taken together rather than in sequence. We cover that in company formation and, for pure asset-holding vehicles, on the holding company account page.

Funding the account without triggering a refusal

An approved account that cannot be funded is not an account. Each broker publishes its funding constraints:

• IBKR: “Interactive Brokers strongly discourages and, generally, rejects third-party deposits, which have historically been viewed by the financial services industry and its regulators as being highly susceptible to acts of fraud and money laundering.” Physical currency deposits are against policy and attract a 1% special handling fee with a USD 50 minimum; physical stock certificates are not accepted.
• EXANTE: “The account can be funded only by the verified account owner — no 3rd party transfers are allowed.” Transfers from cryptocurrency exchanges and wallets, from institutions in restricted regions and from sanctioned institutions are refused. The payment reference must carry the account number and full name.
• Saxo: approval in about a week assumes the company already holds a corporate bank account.

The practical consequence for a non-resident structure: the money must arrive from a bank account in the company’s own name. If the funds sit with the shareholder, they have to enter the company first, as a documented contribution or loan, and be visible in the company’s bank statements before they move to the broker. Companies that were refused a bank account in the first place should start there — we set out the usual causes in our note on why banks reject high-risk business account applications.

Treasury mandate versus active trading

What the company intends to do with the account changes the assessment as much as who owns it.

A treasury mandate — parking corporate cash in money-market instruments, listed shares, plain bonds or non-structured UCITS — can be executed without an appropriateness test. Article 25(4) of MiFID II permits execution-only service in those non-complex instruments where the service is provided at the client’s initiative and the client is warned that no appropriateness assessment is being made.

Anything complex — derivatives, leveraged FX, structured products, margin — falls back under Article 25(3): the firm must ask about the knowledge and experience of the people who will actually trade, and warn the client if the product is not appropriate. This is why brokers ask for an investment-experience summary per authorised dealer, and why a newly formed holding company staffed by one director with no trading history is refused margin even when its documents are perfect.

Professional classification is a separate lever again. Under Annex II of MiFID II, an entity qualifies as a professional client per se only as a “large undertaking” meeting two of three tests: a balance-sheet total of EUR 20,000,000, net turnover of EUR 40,000,000, or own funds of EUR 2,000,000. Almost no founder-owned holding company clears that. The elective route is more realistic: Saxo lists its corporate criteria as two of — a portfolio above EUR 500,000 in the entity’s name, an average of at least ten qualifying trades per quarter over four quarters, or authorised dealers with at least one year of professional experience in a role requiring product knowledge.

Decide the mandate before you apply. A treasury file and a trading file are different applications with different evidence, and mixing them is a common reason for a request for information that never gets answered properly. If you want that mapped to real platforms, that is the work behind our brokerage and custody account opening service; for operating companies with heavy trading flow, see accounts for trading companies.

The same rule in the UK, US, Hong Kong and Ukraine

The obligations above are EU instruments. The firm advises across several markets, and the equivalent rules are structured differently in each.

For the UAE and Singapore we confirm the instrument in force at the date of the mandate rather than citing one here — both frameworks live in regulator-issued notices and federal legislation that are revised on their own timetable, and a stale citation is worse than none.

What a well-built application looks like

In practice, a file that clears all three brokers contains: a registry extract dated within the last month; the constitutional documents with no bearer-share clause; a certificate of incumbency or good standing where the register is not publicly searchable; proof of a real principal place of business; identification and address evidence for every director and every owner at 20% and above, all under six months old and none of it a mobile phone bill; a board resolution naming the authorised traders and, separately, authorising margin; an LEI; the entity’s tax number and the controlling persons’ tax residences; a written source-of-wealth narrative for the ultimate owner supported by the underlying evidence; and a funded corporate bank account in the company’s own name from which the first transfer will come.

Assembling that is a legal exercise before it is an administrative one. Our corporate law practice handles the resolutions, incumbency evidence and structure charts; account opening covers the placement itself.

This article is general information about broker onboarding requirements as published by the providers named, current at the date of writing, and is not legal advice. Broker policy and regulatory practice change; requirements for a specific entity depend on its structure, jurisdiction and intended activity.