Beneficial Ownership

At Northwest Bank, we strive to make the account opening process easy and efficient for our business customers. With that in mind, we’re making you aware of some recent changes that are required by federal regulation.

We are now complying with a new rule under the Bank Secrecy Act intended to help the government and law enforcement in the ongoing fight against money laundering and the financing of terrorism—and potentially prevent business identity theft. Keep in mind, this new rule applies to all banks and credit unions, not just Northwest.

Now, every time certain businesses open a new Northwest deposit, loan, credit card, or trust account, we will are required to ask you for the names, addresses, birth dates, Social Security numbers, and copies of photo identification of the “beneficial owners” of your business.

The rule defines beneficial owner as:

• Each individual who owns 25% or more of the company, and
• One individual who manages the daily operations of the business—like a CEO,CFO, executive director or treasurer

We are required to collect information for the following types of business:

• Corporations
• Limited liability companies (LLCs)
• Limited partnerships
• General partnerships
• State-registered business trusts

If your business does not fall into one of these categories, our teams will not need to collect the information listed above, but will still ask you to sign a form to verify that you are exempt from this requirement.

We want to make this easy for you.

That’s why we developed this webpage -- to prepare you for this new step in our account opening process. You can visit one of our office or click the link below for a worksheet that will explain the rule and prepare you to collect the information we need. 

Keep in mind—as long as the ownership of your business stays the same, we’ll only need to collect the information one time. After that, you can simply sign to certify the accuracy of the information we have on file.

If you have any questions about this new rule, please contact your local Northwest office or representative. You can find your local contact using our office locator.