LLCPapers — LLC formation paperwork, generated correctly

What a bank actually asks for to open an LLC business account

Last reviewed August 2026. Written for a brand-new US LLC opening its first business checking account. Not legal or tax advice.

Most people get turned away at the branch for a boring reason: they brought the state filing and nothing else. Banks are not checking whether your LLC is a good idea — they are satisfying two federal obligations. Understanding which obligation each document serves tells you exactly what to bring.

The two things the bank is really doing

1. Confirming the entity exists and you may act for it. A bank account is a contract. The bank needs evidence that the LLC is a real registered entity, and that the human in front of them has authority to bind it. Your state filing proves the first. Your operating agreement and a banking resolution prove the second.

2. Customer Due Diligence on beneficial owners. Under the federal CDD rule, banks must identify and verify the natural people who own or control a legal-entity customer, and record a person who exercises significant control over it. This is why they want a driver's licence from someone who is not even in the branch — it is a rule the bank is under, not the bank being difficult.

The checklist

The three things that actually go wrong

1. Applying for the EIN before the state approves the LLC

If the formation is later rejected or the name changes, the EIN is now attached to an entity name that doesn't match your articles, and the bank will refuse the mismatch. Get the approved filing back first, then apply for the EIN with the exact legal name on it.

2. The name doesn't match across the three documents

"Redwood Analytics LLC", "Redwood Analytics, LLC" and "Redwood Analytics L.L.C." are the same company to you and three different strings to a compliance system. Copy the name character-for-character off the state-returned articles into everything else, punctuation included.

3. No operating agreement for a single-member LLC

Single-member owners assume they don't need one because there is nobody to agree with. The document is not only for resolving disputes between members — it is the evidence that the LLC is a separate entity from you, which is the whole point of forming it, and it's what the bank reads to confirm you can sign. It takes about two minutes to produce one.

Before you go to the branch

Call and ask two questions: "what do you need from a brand-new single-member (or multi-member) LLC?" and "can I open it in branch today or does it go to a review queue?" Requirements vary by bank and some online-only banks won't take multi-member LLCs at all. Five minutes on the phone beats a second trip.

What this page does not cover

It does not cover non-US-resident owners (banks add passport, ITIN and often in-person requirements), LLCs with entity members rather than individuals, or the separate FinCEN beneficial ownership reporting regime, which is a filing obligation to the government and is not the same thing as the bank's CDD questions. It also can't tell you any specific bank's internal policy — those genuinely differ, which is why the phone call above is the step people skip.