De-banking
De-banking is the closure of an individual or business account by a bank that no longer wants the relationship, often for risk or reputational reasons rather than any specific wrongdoing. It is the account-level outcome that a sector-wide de-risking policy produces for a particular customer.
A de-banked business can lose its primary account with limited notice and no right of appeal, and rebuilding from scratch in the same sector commonly takes 4-8 weeks with no guarantee. Keeping a live second relationship turns de-banking from an existential event into a routing change.
De-risking is a bank’s decision to exit or refuse entire categories of client, rather than assess each business individually, in order to avoid the compliance cost of monitoring them.
Offboarding is a bank or acquirer’s process for closing an existing account, typically triggered by a compliance review, a policy change on the client’s sector, or a ratio breach, rather than a specific fraud finding.
Correspondent banking is the arrangement where one bank holds accounts for and executes payments on behalf of another bank, usually to reach currencies or jurisdictions the first bank cannot access directly.
Pre-approval is an informal read on whether an institution is likely to accept an applicant before a formal application is filed, based on the business profile, jurisdiction, and file quality.