In Lunar, we have a mission to give all entrepreneurs and self-employed individuals a boost to build their businesses with a bank account that makes it easy to get started, grow, and manage the company's finances.

It is a priority for us to work for those who do not get attention from other banks: the entrepreneurs, the solo self-employed, and small businesses. We are proud that we give full attention to those who are ignored elsewhere.

Unfortunately, we cannot provide every company with a business account at Lunar. And in some cases, this affects good and honest entrepreneurs.

We understand that it is super frustrating to have your application rejected when all you are trying to do is get your business started. It is especially frustrating if you do not receive a good enough reason for the rejection.

Therefore, we would like to explain more about why we sometimes reject companies that apply for a business account at Lunar.

As a regulated Danish bank that handles thousands of payments and transactions every day, it is our responsibility to fight all forms of financial crime and ensure that illegal funds do not pass through the system.

When we make decisions in the area we call “compliance,” we must be extra cautious and very conscious about what we say yes and no to. It's about protecting our partners, customers, customers' customers, and society.

We are building a new kind of bank, which means we are not yet able to meet all companies' needs – therefore, we may reject an application if we see that we cannot help with the required needs.

We always want to be as open and transparent as possible, and we know it is a setback for that vision when we cannot explain in detail why we cannot give you a Business account.

However, we cannot tell our rejected customers the exact reason why we cannot onboard them, as this risks customers with illegal intentions finding ways to cheat the system. It is very important to us that the risk model we use remains confidential so that our processes for properly knowing our customers can be upheld.

When we review an application, we look at the company, its purpose, what the account will be used for, and the company's history. Your age and gender play no role in the assessment.

It is in our interest to give those who apply, a Business account. If we see that there are overall challenges related to the risk we take, we ask follow-up questions. We ask questions to the majority of applicants.

It can take time when questions and answers go back and forth, and we definitely understand that it can be tiring – and extremely irritating if, after several clarifications, you receive a rejection.

We must also take questions and answers in writing – it is not an option to do it over the phone, even though we understand that sometimes it is easier.

We want to get better at explaining which companies cannot become customers at Lunar. Today, you cannot even submit your application if we do not intend to onboard you.

Although we want to provide more information about who we cannot welcome as customers, it is always an overall assessment that forms the basis of a rejection. It can be challenging for us if, for example, a company has complex ownership structures with multiple underlying companies involved. We are continuously working on improving this.

We are front-runners in having a fully digital process to properly know our customers and a purely digital application process. However, even with the best technology, it is still a difficult task to distinguish good and honest businesses from criminals who do everything to appear completely legitimate.

Even though we have great confidence in our systems, we cannot ensure that a customer will not attempt to commit a financial crime. Therefore, we must be cautious – and this can affect honest and decent companies.

We thoroughly assess the risk we take – and if the risks associated with a company, industry, ownership, business plan, etc., are overall too high, we must say no.

Our goal is to give entrepreneurs better opportunities to build their businesses. We are also a growing company, and we are building new, robust and more precise systems that will enable more companies to get an account at Lunar. We have already opened up for IVS, holding companies, and companies with multiple owners.

But it is extremely important to us that we can give undivided attention to entrepreneurs while meeting all the necessary regulatory requirements.

Therefore, we must reject some applications, even though the assessment may hide fantastic companies that just want to break through.

Thank you for reading!

Jacob Kirk Faber, Head of Business

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