Have just abandoned my application to open a business Account with HSBC, after being dragged through weeks of the application process, due to them unnecessarily applying FATCA to Limited company applicants, at this time. I have spent weeks chasing their customer service team, making formal complaints which have not hastened the process or resulted in anybody taking responsibility for the delays. I have been lied to about the length of time the process should take. HSBC obviously didn't put their money where their mouth is, in terms of ensuring that they had sufficiently trained staff in adequate numbers to deal with this. I have had to chase them all the way through the process, regardless of trying to escalate complaints. After being told that I would receive a telephone interview at 5 PM today, in order to finalise the matter and open my Account, I was actually called at 5:40 PM and was told that I'd missed out a tick in one of the boxes, but a colleague had been trying to reach me on the telephone to let me know. This transpired to be another lie, as I there is no record of any call from them. I decided to call Santander to ask them how long the process would take with them. I went through the whole process over the telephone, received first class for customer service and my business account was opened after 40 minutes! I was told that I wasn't the first disgruntled customer who had become sick of the appallingly poor service from HSBC and had called them. If only I'd done this six weeks ago! I wouldn't give HSBC my custom if they paid me. And absolutely horrible experience over the past six weeks that has caused much stress and taken up far too much of my life.