A bank reference will be needed from any personal bank account you currently have, this will be in the form of a letter and will be required from all the signatories, directors and shareholders of the account you are planning to open.
You also need to send the bank where you want to open the account a board resolution that choices the approved signatories. If you are hiring the services of an agency in your bank account application then they will be responsible for preparing this for you.
Once you have completed all the necessary documents and filled in the forms correctly ensure they are all signed and then they are to be sent together to the bank where you wish to open the account. Once your Cyprus bank account is open you can then make a deposit into it, normally this is in the region of 1,000 USD, 1,000 Euro or 500 GBP.
Any bank account opened in another country, apart from your own country, is considered an offshore bank account. Whether you are looking for a personal offshore bank account or a corporate offshore bank account the appeal of offshore bank accounts is the amount of tax you will save. Recently, rules and laws governing an offshore bank account have become a lot stricter. Any bank account holding over $1,000 USD has to be reported as income to the IRS, even if that bank account is located in a jurisdiction such as the Cayman Islands. Some companies and more affluent individuals choose to open an offshore bank account in the smaller sovereign states as they permit account holders to stay close to anonymous.
Continues at Cyprus Company Formation and Merchant Service Forum