The Tribune

More Bahamian businesses than individual citizens suffered new bank account opening delays during the 2024 second half, it was revealed yesterday.

The Central Bank, unveiling its second annual survey on new bank account openings, found that less than 5 percent of the 1,736 new account applications by resident businesses during the final six months of last year were not approved by end-December 2024

In contrast, more than 99 percent of the 25,345 resident bank account applications were authorised by Bahamian commercial banks. However, this was the only category to experience rejections, with a tiny 0.3 percent denied while no business applications were rejected.

“As to the processing outcomes, commercial banks approved 99.3 percent of total resident applications, while 0.3 percent were denied,” the Central Bank said. “The denial rate was equivalent to about three out of every 1,000 submissions, as compared to four out of every 1,000 applications over the first half of the year.

“A remaining 0.4 percent of applications, roughly 4.2 out of every 1,000, were either still pending review or incomplete at the end of December 2024, equally distributed between the two categories of submissions. With a 99.8 percent closure rate for individual applications as opposed to just 98.6 percent of business requests, an estimated 99.7 percent of resident individual requests were approved and only 0.3% percent were denied.

“Conversely, only 95.4 percent of requests from resident businesses were approved, leaving an unprocessed volume of 1.2 percent - 12 per 1,000- and incomplete submissions of 3.4 percent - 34 per 1,000 - and none having been denied. Compared to the first half of 2024, about 1.3 percent - 13 per 1,000 - of business requests were turned down, and 1.9 percent - 19 per 1,000 - of these submissions were still awaiting decisions.”

Detailing the volume of new account applications received in the 2024 second half, the Central Bank added: “During the second half of 2024, commercial banks received a total of 28,012 deposit applications, including incomplete submissions. This was almost the same number as in the first half of 2024 - only 141 fewer requests.

“Of this amount, 27,145 (96.9 percent) originated from individuals or entities classified as residents for exchange control purposes, which represented a slight fall in volume of 0.7 percent. Non-residents submitted the balance of 867 (3.1 percent) applications, increasing by 7.6 percent since the last survey. By currency, 27,024 applications (96.5 percent) were for Bahamian dollar accounts, with the remaining 988 (3.5 percent) for foreign currency facilities.

“By type, the most frequent resident application was for savings accounts (72.4 percent), followed by demand deposits (15.8 percent) and fixed accounts (11.7 percent). Compared to the first half of 2024, the number of fixed account applications increased by 19.7 percent, and chequing account applications by 1.2 percent. However, savings account requests decreased by 3.8 percent.”

As for processing rates, the Central Bank said: “Approximately 99.7 percent of resident account applications were processed during the review period, incrementally exceeding the processing rate in the prior period. This comprised, respectively, 99.8 percent and 98.6 percent of private individuals and business submissions.

“That is, only about three out of every 1,000 applications from residents were not processed, as compared to approximately nine out of every 1,000 such requests during the preceding six6 months. Conversely, 98.5 percent of non-resident applications were processed, leaving 15 out of every 1,000 requests still unresolved at the end of the period, compared to 35 out of every 1,000 remaining submissions unprocessed in the first half of the year.

“Across the major depositor categories, banks also made faster decisions on applications during the second half of the year. Bahamian dollar accounts recorded an average closure rate of 99.7 percent, slightly up from 99.2 percent in the prior period. Similarly, attention to resident foreign currency accounts applications achieved a 100 percent completion rate, compared to an average of 94.8 percent of the corresponding submissions in the previous period.”