Opening a Business Investor Account

If you are reading this it means you’ve opened up an LLC. If you have you probably already have a checking account. One thing you should consider opening up is an investing account. It is a good way of keeping your stalled cash working for your company. It’s also a good way of building up an easy asset base. Let’s talk about opening a Business Investor Account.

A Business Investor Account is an investment account under an LLC. Now that we have gotten that out of the way, let’s discuss what it is and how to open one up.

What is a Business Investor Account

A business investor account is an account that you open up under your LLC. The wealthy primarily for tax purposes. A lot of wealthy individuals utilize this method of investing in the stock market quite frequently. In fact, Walton Enterprises LLC is the largest shareholder of Walmart. So, why invest in an investment account under an LLC? Well, let’s take Walton Enterprises LLC for example.

One of the main reasons why the Walton family has their shares of Walmart through their LLC is because of tax reasons. I won’t get too far into here, but I have written various other articles regarding taxes and LLCs. But what I will say here is that because their LLC has over 36% of Walmart, they can leverage the wealth of those assets.

Bank’s will see those shares as something to borrow against. I don’t know about you, but having billions of dollars to leverage against I’d feel safe lending to them.

How to open a Business Investor Account

I’d like to start this out by saying you don’t need a checking account to open one up. You can open on up just by filling out a form and submitting a few documents. What documents you will need depends on how long your business has been opened.

If you have been operating for less than a year you will need to submit your certificate of filing. For businesses operating for longer than a year you will need to submit a letter of good standing. There is also a form you’ll need to fill out. That form varies for each investment firm.

My personal favorite is Merril Edge. I like it because I bank with Bank of America and it makes it easier for me to transfer my funds over. This leads to our next point.

Can you Transfer your current Personal Funds into a BIA?

This one is going to be short, the answer is yes you can! After opening up your BIA you can call your financial institution and request they close out your personal account and transfer the funds to your business account. If you want your accounts to be linked to the same login information there’s a small step for that. You’ll have to put in your SSN instead of your TIN or EIN number. That is assuming that your current account is linked to your SSN.

Takeaway

I wrote this article because I remember when I started my first LLC and how hard it was to figure out how to open up my investment account. I get it you go on the website and you can’t find the button that says business investment account. You try to reach out and you can’t reach anyone or the chat system doesn’t do it for you.

Yeah, see, trust me I’ve been there. But through some trial and error, I’ve figured it out. With that said I wanted to share what I’ve learned so that it’s easier for the next person.