Online bank account for a community interest company

[Fallon]

Hi everyone,

I'm going to be incorporating a community interest company soon and looking for recommendations for online or app-driven bank accounts. It'll be a small membership CIC limited by guarantee.

I looked at Monzo - but can't easily find out if they'll offer a bank account to a CIC set up in this way - their information just says; 'We can only offer accounts to sole traders and limited companies at this time', and I also looked at ANNA, but they get a few dicey reviews on Trustpilot.

Anyone have any experience of this? Would be great to get some recommendations. The bank account won't be receiving or making very many payments and may, ultimately, only be a stop-gap on the way to getting an account with a high street bank. I just wanted to try and keep things REALLY easy to begin with as the two directors (me and one other) don't live close together and the absolute faff of having tried to speak with HSBC, Barclays and RBS about this already has sent me down the online only route for speed and convenience.

[StevieBee]

The CoOp used to provide some specialist banking for smaller, local community / charity type organisations. Have no idea if they still do but worth a look.

[Frankthered]

Virgin Money appear to offer current accounts for charities and societies & clubs. No idea what hoops you would have to jump through - could be worth a look though.

I haven't used them for business, but do have a personal account with them and it's been fine.

[Pot Bellied Fool]

I used Metro to set up an account for a non-profit Networking Group a little while back. It's not an online only account and I did need to go into branch with ID etc but in practice we administer it entirely through debit card/online banking.

At the time, the main banks were refusing to open new accounts due to lockdown but Metro were very pro-active.