Opening a bank account for a newly acquired professional corporation takes six weeks at a money-center bank. We open it in five minutes. Here's what that changes for your M&A close cadence.
You just signed a definitive agreement on a new PC. Closing is in 30 days, the kind of timeline covered in closing a practice acquisition in one banking day (opens in a new tab). The seller's lawyer wants to know where the wire is going. Your incumbent bank's small business team helpfully tells you they can open the new account in 35 to 45 business days. That timeline does not match yours.
Slow account opening at a money-center bank is a feature, not a bug. They have a KYC team in Manila reviewing your EIN docs, a compliance team in Charlotte reviewing your beneficial ownership, and a relationship manager in Boston who returns your email next Tuesday. Each one of those handoffs adds days.
Healthcare-native banks pre-build the workflow for MSO-PC platforms. They know what an EIN attached to a PC looks like. They know what a CPOM-compliant ownership structure documents. They know what an Operating Agreement assigning the MSO as the manager looks like.
When you submit those documents, the bank's underwriting model recognizes them as a healthcare PC and routes you through a verified path. Lemma opens accounts for new PCs in 5 minutes when the documents are ready. Five minutes is not a marketing number. It is the actual elapsed time from submitting the application to a funded account number.
That speed is not magic. It is the result of a bank built around MSO-PC ownership documents (opens in a new tab) treating MSO-PC structures as the default, not the exception.
If you are closing 5 to 20 practices a year, account opening speed maps directly to deal IRR.
A six-week account opening means you cannot route claims revenue to the right entity until week six. Until then, payer payments are either landing in the seller's old account (and you reconcile later) or sitting in escrow. Either path costs you working capital float, audit complexity, and operator time.
A five-minute account opening means you fund the new PC on closing day, route payer EFT enrollments the next morning, and have a clean operating account ready before the first patient encounter under your ownership. Your transition services agreement gets shorter. Your post-close cleanup gets cheaper.
For a 10-deal-per-year platform, the time savings compound into something real: faster integration, lower TSA scope, less commingled revenue, and the kind of clean start covered in the first 90 days after a practice acquisition (opens in a new tab).
To open an account in five minutes, have these ready before you start:
That is it. No branch visit. No notary. No four-week wait, and no repeat of how long account opening takes when you're not doing it one PC at a time (opens in a new tab).