What Banks Expect to See in a Business Plan

When a bank or EMI asks for a business plan, it is usually trying to understand how the company is expected to operate: what it will sell, who its customers will be, how those customers will be acquired, who will deliver the product or service, how the company will generate revenue, how it will be funded and what kind of financial activity should follow from that model.

This is especially important for newly incorporated or recently launched companies. An established business can often support its onboarding profile with historical contracts, invoices, customer relationships, bank statements and transaction history. A new company may have little or none of that evidence yet, so the business plan becomes one of the main documents available to explain what the company intends to do.

A useful onboarding business plan should make the proposed business understandable and show that the assumptions behind it have been thought through. For corporate service providers and onboarding teams, this also means checking that the plan describes the same company as the rest of the onboarding file.

Why might a bank or EMI ask for a business plan?

Not every financial institution asks every company for a business plan. The request becomes more likely when the company has limited operating history and the reviewer cannot rely on historical activity to understand how the business works.

For a new or recently launched company, the plan may need to explain:

• what products or services the company intends to provide;
• who the expected customers are;
• how those customers will be acquired;
• which countries the company expects to operate in;
• who will perform the work;
• whether contractors, suppliers or other providers will be involved;
• how the company expects to earn revenue;
• what the main operating costs are;
• how the company will be funded before customer revenue becomes sufficient;
• and what level of financial activity is expected as the business develops.

These points should connect. A useful way to think about the document is:

In practice, weak plans are often not missing a standard section. The problem is that the sections do not add up to one workable business. Customer assumptions do not support the revenue forecast, the team does not support the stated delivery model, or the company has no clear plan for funding the period before revenue develops.

A business plan is forward-looking, so its projections will never be perfectly accurate. What matters is whether management can explain the commercial and financial assumptions behind them.

What should the executive summary tell the bank?

A business plan executive summary should let the reviewer understand the company before reading the rest of the document: what it sells, to whom, where, how it is delivered, who runs the business, how it earns revenue and whether the company is already trading or is still being developed.

The rest of the plan should support that summary. If the executive summary describes a European B2B consulting company but the financial forecast assumes most revenue will come from individual customers in Asia, the reviewer is left with two different versions of the business.

Phrases such as “a rapidly growing global company”, “an innovative market leader” or “a unique solution with unlimited potential” explain little unless the plan shows how the business is expected to work.

Explain the business model and operating model

The reviewer should be able to follow the business from customer demand to delivery and payment. The plan needs to explain what the company sells, who buys it, how the work is delivered, who performs it and what the company itself is responsible for.

This becomes especially important when third parties are involved.

Consider an intermediary model: a customer pays the company $10, the company pays an external provider $9 and keeps $1. The numbers alone do not explain why the company exists in the transaction.

The reviewer is likely to want to understand why the customer buys from the company instead of going directly to the provider, what the company does for its margin, and whether the remaining margin can support its own operating costs. The answer may be that the company finds the customer, defines the scope, selects providers, manages delivery, takes responsibility for quality or performs another clear commercial function.

The same logic applies to agencies, consultancies, marketplaces, brokers and businesses that rely heavily on subcontractors. The plan should show where the company itself creates value.

For a more detailed framework, see How to Describe Your Business Activity for Bank or EMI Onboarding.

Be specific about customers, markets and geography

“Customers across Europe” is not a customer strategy. A business plan for bank account opening should give enough detail to understand where revenue is expected to come from and why those expectations are reasonable.

A company might explain that it initially intends to focus on Lithuania, Czechia and Austria, while smaller parts of the marketing budget are used to test Germany, France, the UK and Ireland. The exact percentages are less important than the logic: why those markets were selected, how customers there will be reached and what assumptions support the expected mix.

This is where market analysis becomes useful. A market analysis in a business plan should support the company’s actual assumptions, not simply quote a large industry statistic and conclude that demand is strong.

If an external research firm conducted the analysis, the company should be able to identify the research and explain how it was used. If the founder conducted it, the underlying sources should be clear: industry reports, public datasets, competitor research, market studies or other credible material.

Management should be able to explain where its assumptions came from.

Explain how customers will be acquired

A revenue forecast depends on customers, so the business plan should explain how those customers are expected to arrive. Acquisition may come from direct sales, referrals, the founder’s professional network, partnerships, search and content marketing, paid advertising, marketplaces, distributors or an existing pipeline.

The important part is the connection between the acquisition model and the forecast. If the company expects to add 20 new customers every month, it should explain what activity is expected to produce those customers and what that activity will cost.

If the founder’s network is expected to be a major source of business, the plan should explain why that assumption is credible. Relevant industry experience, previous roles, professional relationships, a CV or an established professional profile can provide that context.

Show who can execute the plan

For a newly incorporated company, the plan should make clear who will perform the work and where the required expertise comes from. That may be the founder, employees, contractors, subcontractors, external advisers or a combination.

If the founder has direct experience in the proposed activity, explain it. If important capabilities will come from external specialists, explain that structure instead of leaving the reviewer to infer it.

The team described in the plan should be capable of delivering the business described elsewhere in the document.

Make the revenue model easy to follow

The reviewer should understand how activity becomes revenue. A company may earn money through project fees, retainers, subscriptions, commissions, markups, licensing fees or another model.

If several revenue streams exist, explain which ones matter most.

Pricing also needs to make sense alongside the cost structure. A company that retains only a small margin after paying external providers should explain how that margin covers employees, marketing, software, professional fees and other operating costs.

Financial projections need assumptions

Financial projections can be especially important for a new company because there may be little historical financial activity to rely on. The useful part is not only the headline number but the assumptions that produce it.

A weak forecast for a new marketing company might look like this:

The spreadsheet may be complete, but the commercial logic is not. Why will ten clients arrive in the first month? Why does the customer base double in the second? What acquisition activity produces that growth? Can the company deliver the work, and what will it cost?

A more realistic model starts with assumptions. The company may expect three to five clients during the first month and then target two or three additional clients per month. It may divide customers into three segments:

The plan can then explain which segment is the commercial priority, how many new customers are expected from each segment and how they will be acquired.

When reviewing a forecast, break the headline number down:

• how many customers are expected;
• what each customer is expected to pay;
• what those payments are for;
• how new customers will be acquired;
• what acquisition is expected to cost;
• what the company will spend on employees, contractors, suppliers and operating expenses;
• and how long the company can operate if revenue develops more slowly than planned.

The same applies to expenses. A credible forecast should account for the main costs required by the operating model: employees, contractors, suppliers, marketing, software, premises where relevant, professional fees and other recurring expenses. Rapid revenue growth with almost no increase in costs deserves another look.

Explain what happens if growth is slower

A new company should show how it can operate if customer revenue arrives later than hoped. If customer payments are expected to cover every expense from the first month, the plan is built around a best-case scenario.

Where a UBO or shareholder intends to support the company until it reaches sustainable revenue, the plan should state how much funding is expected, which costs it will cover, how long the support is intended to last and what happens if break-even takes longer.

For a broader overview of supporting evidence, see Corporate Bank Account Opening Documents: A Complete Onboarding Checklist.

The business plan should match the onboarding file

A detailed business plan can still create problems if the rest of the onboarding file tells a different story.

The application may say that the company provides consulting services while the website focuses on software development. The business plan may introduce marketing, recruitment and trading as additional revenue streams. Its forecast may assume customers in markets that are not mentioned elsewhere, while the team structure does not match the people actually performing the work.

Each statement can sound plausible on its own. Together, they create uncertainty.

The wording across the application, website, contracts and business plan does not need to be identical. The underlying business does.

Why an AI-generated business plan still needs a full review

In practice, many founders now ask an AI tool to produce a business plan and then treat the result as ready for submission. The risk is not that the document sounds artificial. The risk is that it fills gaps with plausible but unchecked assumptions.

An AI-generated draft may add services the company does not actually provide, markets management has not selected, acquisition channels it does not use, employees or contractors that do not exist, or financial projections that were never tied back to the real operating model.

Each addition may look reasonable. The problem appears when the bank compares the plan with the application, website, contracts, expected activity and other onboarding information.

Every important statement in an AI-assisted plan should therefore be reviewed as if it had been written by an external consultant who knew nothing about the business.

Newly incorporated companies: planned activity is not historical activity

A new company does not need to present planned activity as established history. If there are no historical customers, describe them as expected or targeted. If contracts are still being negotiated, do not present them as existing customers. If revenue has not started, label the numbers as forecasts.

A useful business plan separates facts from assumptions. Existing facts may include founder experience, available funding, signed contracts or letters of intent where they genuinely exist, appointed employees or contractors, established supplier relationships and completed market research. Assumptions may include customer growth, pricing, future hiring and expected revenue.

For a newly incorporated company, a coherent forward-looking plan is more useful than an invented history.

Common business plan mistakes in bank onboarding

Several problems appear repeatedly:

Too little detail. The plan names the industry but does not explain the actual business.

Too much optimism. Revenue grows rapidly while customer acquisition, costs and operating capacity barely change.

Forecasts without assumptions. The spreadsheet contains numbers but no explanation of where they came from.

Generic market analysis. The plan talks about a large global opportunity but does not identify realistic target customers or markets.

No downside scenario. The company explains what happens if everything works but not how it will operate if revenue arrives more slowly.

Unclear intermediary economics. Money moves through the company, but its role and margin are not properly explained.

Contradictions with the onboarding file. The plan describes different activities, customers, markets, staffing or transaction expectations from the other documents.

Template language presented as fact. Statements about growth, market leadership or future expansion are included without evidence or operational logic.

Most of these problems have the same cause: the document states conclusions without showing how management reached them.

Already have a business plan? Check this before sending it to the bank

Many companies already have a business plan before they start bank or EMI onboarding. A version originally written for founders, investors, a grant application or internal planning may contain information that is outdated, incomplete or inconsistent with the onboarding application.

Before sending it, check:

If not, fix the inconsistencies before submission.

How detailed should a business plan for a bank be?

There is no universal page count. A simple service business may need less explanation than a company with several markets, external providers, complex supply chains or multiple revenue streams.

Use enough detail to explain the model, support the main assumptions and answer the obvious questions. Extra pages do not make a weak plan stronger.

Final thought

A bank asking for a business plan is asking management to show that the proposed business holds together: customers, delivery, costs, funding and financial projections should describe one coherent model.

A strong plan will not guarantee account opening or remove every follow-up question. But especially when historical activity is limited, it can give the financial institution a clear basis for understanding how the company expects to operate and what financial activity should follow from that plan.

About the author

Alexander Blinov is the founder of OnboardOS. His background includes corporate legal, KYC/AML and bank and EMI onboarding work for international companies. He is building OnboardOS to help corporate service providers collect client information, identify missing evidence and prepare consistent account-opening packages.