Should the HOA have its own bank account?

The short answer: open an account in the association's name. A director's personal account mixes the association's money with one person's, and the next treasurer cannot see it. The board opens the account at a bank. This page does not name a bank, and it does not say a statute requires the account.

The lawn vendor is waiting on a check. The new-account desk wants a form, a tax ID, and a vote the board has not taken. A director's checking account works tonight. Six months later that director moves, the login leaves with them, and the board rebuilds the year from whatever statements they will forward.

The FDIC's guide for corporation, partnership, and unincorporated association accounts is about deposit insurance, not about how to run a meeting. It still answers the titling question. An account in the name of an unincorporated association is insured as the association's deposits, separate from the officers' personal deposits, when the association is engaged in an independent activity. The guide means the association exists to do its own work, not to multiply insurance coverage. The FDIC's own example is a neighborhood association. The account title has to include the association's name. If the title uses the officers' names instead, the guide says the funds may be insured as those individuals' personal deposits, not as the organization's. A corporation's deposits, held in the corporation's name, are separate from the personal deposits of its officials in the same way.

A second account at the same bank does not raise that limit. The guide adds accounts owned by the same organization, even when one is labeled operations and one is a building fund, and insures the total up to $250,000. Keep a roof account if you need the roof money kept off the mowing bill. Do not open it because you think it buys a second $250,000. Your documents and your bank say what the application requires. General information, not legal advice.

• Title the account with the association's name
• Keep officers' personal accounts separate from that one
• An account titled only in an officer's name may be treated as that person's
• A second account at the same bank is added to the first for insurance

In Hoavik the association connects its own bank, and the treasurer checks charges and receipts against that feed. We do not open the account. We do not pick the bank. The treasurer still keeps the books.