The KYC/AML Gauntlet and Broker Onboarding for Corporate Accounts
Anyone else feel like setting up a corporate trading account with a new broker these days requires an act of Congress, a blood sample, and a signed affidavit from your grandmother? I'm trying to get a new prop firm onboarded for some slightly larger-scale strategies, nothing crazy, just a few different desks under one roof, and the KYC/AML process is an absolute nightmare. It's not just the sheer volume of documents – articles of incorporation, proof of address for every director and significant shareholder, source of funds for the company, source of wealth for the individuals… I get the need for compliance, really I do. But the back-and-forth, the requests for documents they already have, the forms that magically change requirements mid-submission. It feels less like due diligence and more like an endurance test designed to see if you'll just give up and go back to individual accounts. Does anyone have a broker or payment service provider (PSP) they've worked with recently on the corporate side that actually made this process relatively painless? Or is this just the new normal, a bureaucratic purgatory we all have to suffer through to move any serious capital around?
Totally hear you on this. It feels like every time I open a new corporate account, the hoops get higher and the paperwork doubles. I sometimes wonder if they're trying to discourage larger-scale operations with how much friction there is.