Opening and managing your business savings account

Please note

You’ll need to speak to a member of our Corporate Savings team if your organisation has a turnover of £10 million or more.

Who can open a Business Saver account?

Nationwide Business Savings accounts are for businesses and organisations with an annual turnover of less than £10 million. They must be established and operated in the UK.

Our Business Savings accounts are for your short and long term needs. They aren’t suitable for use as a business current account or the day-to-day transactions of running a business.

To open an account with us, your company must be incorporated in the UK, even if you live overseas.

See the table below for a list of eligible and ineligible business and organisation types.

Business Savings eligible business and organisation types table
Eligible business and organisation types	Ineligible business and organisation types
• Limited companies • Charities • Partnerships • Sole Traders • Housing Associations • Clubs & Societies • Parish Councils	• Banks/Building Societies • Insurance Companies • Corporate Trust • Borough Council • Cash/Liquidity Fund • Company Pension • Friendly Society • Life Policy • Investment and Unit Trusts • Government/Political Party

If you can’t see your business or organisation type in the table, please contact us to check if you're eligible.

How to open an account

You can only open our Business Savings accounts by applying online or by contacting us.

Nationwide branches can’t open a Business Savings account for you. However, if we've asked to see copies of ID after you’ve applied for a Business Savings account, you can take your ID in to your local branch to get it checked.

If you’re looking to add an additional account, you’ll need to go to our Additional Account page.

To open a new Business Savings account with us, follow the three steps below.

Step 1 - Choose your Business Savings account

Take a look and pick one of our Business Savings accounts. You’ll be able to read our eligibility criteria, see our terms and condition and apply online.

You can download a copy of our rates and accounts below.

Business Savings rates About our Business Savings accounts

Step 2 - Send us the information we need

To help us open your savings account(s) as quickly as possible, we've listed all the information you'll need to provide in our printable checklist.

Please note: if any information is missing from your application, it may cause a delay, or you may need to reapply.

We’ll need details about your organisation’s Beneficial Owners, Business Officials and Authorised Signatories. This is how we define these:

Owners, officials and authorised signatories required
	Beneficial Owners	Business Officials	Authorised Signatories
Definition	Anyone with a controlling interest or shareholding of 10% or more in the business. They own the business and the deposit for the company’s savings account. You can ignore this if no one person owns more than 10%, or someone else owns the organisation.	Anyone who has the authority to act on behalf of the company. This could include a director, partner, member or trustee. You can ignore this if you’re a sole trader, or there is only one such official who is also the Beneficial Owner.	Anyone who’s able to sign off transactions or make decisions about the savings account.
What we will need from each of these people (as applicable) are	Residential address Time lived there Place of birth Nationality Tax residence	At least two of the below, unless you’re a sole trader or there’s only one Business Official. We’ll need details of all Beneficial Owners of the organisation. • Residential address • Time lived there • Place of Birth • Nationality Dual Nationality Status Business Officials • Residential address • Place of Birth • Nationality • Dual Nationality Status

Your nominated account details

We need details of the nominated bank account you’ll use for all your withdrawals. It should be in your business or organisation's name.

Your business details

You’ll need to tell us:

your organisation’s annual turnover
the income (or donations if you’re a charity) received each year
the number of full and part-time employees
your total assets.

For businesses with complex ownership structures, we may ask at a later date for a structure chart.

Step 3 – How to prove your identity

Once we’ve received your application form, we’ll aim to verify your identity electronically. If we need to see some original documents, we’ll be in touch.

Read our 'Ways to provide identification' guide for the documents we may ask you for.

We may carry out electronic searches through credit agencies in line with UK Money Laundering Regulations. This is to help us identify you and confirm that the information you’ve provided is correct. These searches won’t affect your credit score and lenders will not use this to assess any credit applications.

For more details, please read our Use of information statement.

Managing your account

We’ve produced a helpful guide on using our Business Saver account. Please click the link below to download the guide:

Using your Business Saver account

We’ll keep you informed about how your savings are performing in the following ways:

Monthly statement

We’ll send you a statement:

when you open your account.
for Instant or notice account, we’ll send you a monthly statement if there have been any deposits on the account.
once you make any withdrawals*.

If you don't make any deposits or withdrawals, but you’re receiving monthly interest, we will send a statement on the 1st of the following month.

Annual statement

We’ll send you an annual statement every April.

If you withdraw the entire balance of the account, we will close the account. Once the account has been closed, you will be required to open a new account to make further deposits.

If you have one of our Business or Corporate Fixed Rate Savings accounts, we’ll contact you before your account matures. We'll then help you arrange the next step for your savings.

If you’re unable to decide what you’d like to do next by the time your account matures, we’ll transfer your closing balance into a Maturity Reserve account. This will have a variable interest rate.

* See your account terms and conditions for deposit and withdrawal limits

How long will it take to process your application?

Our current timescales to process applications are 12 weeks. Please avoid calling in for an update while we're processing your application. It may take a little longer should we require any further information to open your account.

You can contact us below if you need to speak to us about your new Business or Corporate Savings application.