Embrace Russian banks

Oleg Torbosov, founder of Whitewill, tells us.

The development of Whitewill outside Russia has brought with it the interesting experience of opening accounts in Switzerland, England and Dubai. I can say that Russian banks for small businesses are the sweetest of souls who you want to hug and kiss. They will come to you themselves with all the documents, open an account for a new company in one day, and provide convenient applications.

In Russia, the market is small, and in general, the percentage of new entrepreneurs is not very high, which forces banks to be efficient and quick like cheetahs on the hunt.

In conservative and rich countries, banks are like lazy fed cats. You come to them with a bow and a bowl of milk, and they look at you reluctantly with eyes full of doubts, and turn away for a couple of weeks to think whether they need you as a client or not.

In England, we were turned down by four small business banks to open an account. I should point out that our client profile is the same in all three countries: no international transfers, no receipts from individuals, the money comes only for a specific transaction from large local developers - reliable counterparties.

Well, okay, you remind me, you - the founder of an English company - have a red passport with two eagles, what did you want? I accept. In Switzerland, after two zoom interviews, similar to the interrogation in the office of the investigator, we so-and-so agreed to take for horse rates for service one bank. The minimum set of services cost about 50,000₽ per month. After 1.5 months, this bank did open an account for us, grumbling. By this time, three major real estate developers had already sent money to my company from England for closed deals.

But then the game started: work with this, don't work with that - Santa Barbara rests. We were sent £28,000 from Deutsche Bank, and they hung in obscurity for three weeks, and then returned to the sender, with a note that our Swiss bank refused to accept them. We asked what the hell was going on? They said: we just don't work with Deutsche Bank. Couldn't you have told us that in the first place?

By this time half a year had already passed since the company was registered and modern payment systems like Revolut and others became available to us. It's easier there. But until your company is six months old, they don't even talk to you. And how to work during this time without accounts at all?

Went to Dubai last week to bow to the local banks Mashreep and Islamiq Bank to open an account for Wytheville. We have many hundreds of thousands of dirhams accumulated there for receipts too. They communicate in a friendlier way but they take three weeks to open an account too. Emirates NBD told me four weeks to check you and then we'll tell you if we'll open an account or not.

I'm not talking about the interfaces of banking applications and support service in English-Swiss banks, where they reluctantly answer your questions with ignorance and I think they will soon introduce a function of paid answers.

Yes, when you are a European and are used to this level of bank-client relations, you perceive it as a norm, but having the opportunity to compare, I can say that our banks from the position of customer service as cute huskies, which you want to hug and squeeze, compared to the proud grumbling pugs with saliva flowing from the mouth.