New Zealand’s Investor Visa after the rule changes

New Zealand reset its Active Investor Plus category on 1 April 2025 and has amended the instructions repeatedly since. An applicant nominates NZ$5 million under the Growth category or NZ$10 million under the Balanced category, transfers it into acceptable investments in New Zealand, and holds it there for three or five years under conditions written onto the resident visa itself.

Immigration New Zealand’s page for applicants publishes the cost as starting at NZ$27,470 and an approval-in-principle processing time of 80% within three months.

Two categories, and what each requires

BN3 leaves nothing beneath those thresholds: an application must be declined where the nomination falls short of either. Immigration New Zealand describes the Growth category on its own page as carrying higher-risk investments that are typically illiquid and can require a long-term commitment.

The Balanced category admits a wider range of assets and runs for five years rather than three. The choice is not final — BN3 allows one change of category, either while the application is being assessed or within six months of approval in principle.

On the Balanced side the presence requirement moves with the amount nominated. BN10.15.1 cuts the 105 days a Balanced investor must spend in New Zealand by 14 days for each further NZ$1 million placed in direct investments or managed funds accepted by Invest New Zealand, to a maximum reduction of 42 days: NZ$11 million brings the requirement to 91 days, NZ$12 million to 77 and NZ$13 million to 63.

That money must be nominated before approval in principle and must stay invested for the whole 60 months.

What the money is allowed to buy

BN7.10 draws the two lists. Growth money may go only into managed funds and direct investments that Invest New Zealand has assessed against Appendix 15, plus philanthropy capped at 20% of the total invested — no more than NZ$1 million of a NZ$5 million investment. Balanced money may go into all of that, and into listed equities, bonds and property development as well.

The exclusions are drawn tightly. Personal use is out, and the instruction names its examples: a personal residence, a car, a boat or other personal assets. Property development excludes house-and-land packages and off-the-plan purchases, excludes renovation or extension of an existing dwelling, and bars anyone included in the application from residing in the development.

Philanthropy carries four conditions at once. The recipient must be:

• a New Zealand registered charity with five years of compliant annual returns immediately preceding the application;
• holding current Inland Revenue donee status;
• reporting to Charities Services under tier 1, 2 or 3; and
• bound by written agreement to direct the donation exclusively to domestic causes within New Zealand.

A Department of Conservation initiative on the published approved list is the alternative.

What the file has to prove about the money

BN6 requires the nominated funds or assets to be owned by the applicant, unencumbered and legally earned or acquired, and not borrowed except after approval in principle, on the terms the update below sets out.

BN6.5, as the consolidated manual still states it, reaches past the law of the country where the money was made: a business immigration specialist may decline an application where the funds, had they been earned or acquired the same way in New Zealand, would have been unlawfully earned or acquired.

The money then travels a prescribed route. BN8.10 requires transfer through the banking system directly to New Zealand from one of three groups of source:

• the applicant’s own account;
• a joint account with their partner and/or a dependent child included in the application;
• one of three permitted third parties, provided the funds stay identifiable as the applicant’s: a solicitor’s trust account where the solicitor is acting on the applicant’s behalf in the transaction of the nominated funds or assets, a pension scheme in the applicant’s name, or an investment portfolio account in the applicant’s name.

Physical cash is excluded, and every transfer must be documented, traceable and transparent.

Two separate clocks then run. Approval in principle opens six months to transfer and invest under BN8.15, extendable once as described below; miss it and the application must be declined. The investment period is a different count: under BN8.25 the 36 or 60 months run from the date all acceptable investments are completed, or from the date of approval in principle where the investment came first.

The conditions travel with the visa

Every Active Investor Plus resident visa is granted subject to conditions under section 49(1) of the Immigration Act 2009, and BN9.1 sets out four:

• hold the investment to the end of the period;
• spend at least 21 days in New Zealand as a resident across the 36 months on the Growth side, or 105 days across the 60 months on the Balanced side before any reduction;
• keep contact details current;
• file evidence of retention twice, with the 24-month investment questionnaire and then with the closing questionnaire, the second filing covering the final stretch of the period.

Each filing is due within three months after its checkpoint.

Failure has a stated consequence, and it is not a fee. Under BN10.20, a holder who has not complied at 24 months and at the end of the investment period may be made liable for deportation.

Two further deadlines sit alongside: travel conditions on the resident visa run four years from the first day in New Zealand under the Growth category and six under the Balanced category, and family members included in the visa must arrive within 12 months of their visa being granted or apply for residence again.

What comes after the investment period

The end of the investment period does not by itself discharge the conditions. BN10.25 requires a business immigration specialist to be satisfied that the section 49(1) conditions have been complied with; the conditions are then cancelled, in agreement with the applicant, and confirmed in writing.

The page for applicants puts eligibility to apply for permanent residence at three years of keeping the funds in the country under the Growth category and five under the Balanced category, and allows a Permanent Resident Visa application once all conditions have been met at the end of the investment period.

What the April 2025 reset replaced

Until 1 April 2025 the category ran on a weighting table rather than two thresholds. Acceptable investment of between NZ$5 million and NZ$15 million had to be held for 48 months, and was weighted:

• each dollar in listed equities or in philanthropy counted at face value, to a maximum of NZ$7.5 million each;
• each dollar in managed funds counted as two;
• each dollar in direct investment counted as three.

That weighting instruction is still published as a superseded page. The English language requirement went on the same date; BN5 and BN5.1 now carry revoked 01/04/2025 in their own titles.

The rewriting did not stop there, and the manual keeps the record of it. Beneath the version of BN7.10 the manual displays, effective 1 June 2026, sit six superseded versions, four of them dated from the reset onwards: 1 April 2025, 9 June 2025, 17 August 2025 and 4 December 2025. Counting the displayed text, the instruction has been reissued four times since the reset.

BN10.15 has been through the same process, its displayed text effective 17 August 2025 over earlier versions of 1 April 2025 and 19 September 2022.

Updated 27 August 2026. Immigration New Zealand amended the Active Investor Plus source-of-funds and borrowing instructions with effect from 12 August 2026. The sections below cover that amendment.

Borrowing now has to be raised where the asset is

Immigration New Zealand certified Amendment Circular 2026-22 on 12 August 2026. It amends three Active Investor Plus instructions — BN6.5 on funds legally earned, BN7.10 on acceptable investments and BN8.10 on transferring nominated funds — and directs immigration officers to “operate in accordance with the amended instructions from the effective date”, which Appendix 1 gives as 12 August 2026.

The sharpest of those changes is one new limb in BN8.10. Borrowing is not the ordinary route into this visa: under BN6 the nominated funds “must not be borrowed, except after approval in principle”. The order matters.

An applicant nominates funds or assets; Immigration New Zealand approves the application in principle on the strength of them; only then does a six-month window open in which NZ$5 million under the Growth category or NZ$10 million under the Balanced category has to reach an acceptable investment in New Zealand.

A single extension of up to six months can be requested inside that first six-month window, but the timely request must be supported by evidence of reasonable attempts to transfer and invest; if granted, it takes the outside limit to twelve months from the approval-in-principle letter. BN8.10(f) permits post-approval borrowing secured against the nominated assets.

Before 12 August, the published instruction permitted post-approval borrowing secured against nominated assets. The amendment adds a jurisdiction condition: the borrowed funds must be “obtained in the same country or jurisdiction where the nominated assets are located”.

The vocabulary is not settled. The certified instruction says the funds must be “obtained” there, the circular’s summary says they must “originate” there, and Immigration New Zealand’s guidance page for applicants says they must be “located” there — three words for one connecting factor, across three documents published by the same department.

The inconsistency is not only about wording. The summary describes the test by reference to the nominated funds, while the operative instruction refers to where the nominated assets are located, and funds and assets are separate categories throughout these instructions; BN6 treats them as alternatives.

The definition of the lender is new. A commercial lending institution is “a regulated entity that as part of its ordinary course of business, provides loans, credit, or other types of debt financing to individuals on commercial terms”.

The definition turns on regulatory status and ordinary course of business. It does not separately address a relationship between borrower and lender.

The circular carries no transitional provision for the Active Investor Plus category. It does not say how the new limb applies to an application approved in principle before 12 August whose transfer window is still running. On the published documents that question is open, and it is one for Immigration New Zealand rather than for an adviser.

Gifts, and money that moves before it ever leaves

The second amendment sits earlier in the file, at the point where the department decides whether the money was lawfully come by at all. The BN6.5 still shown in the consolidated manual dates from 19 September 2022 and puts two conditions on a gift: the specialist must be satisfied that the giver earned the money lawfully, and funds that are or were in New Zealand cannot be gifted at all.

The amended text keeps both and adds two more. The gift must have been made unconditionally, and it must have been made “in accordance with local law”.

Alongside it comes a requirement with no counterpart in the old instruction. Any transfer of the nominated funds “both within and from the country (or jurisdiction) in which they were originally legally earned or acquired” must have been “transferred lawfully through the banking system (including via a foreign exchange company or money transfer business)”.

The words “both within and” carry the weight. BN8.10 governs the leg into New Zealand; this provision reaches movements that never left the country of origin.

The provision is also a legality test rather than a paperwork test. Money that moved outside the banking system at an earlier stage is not brought into compliance by being documented well.

Thresholds and holding periods are untouched: NZ$5 million held for 36 months under the Growth category, and NZ$10 million for 60 months under the Balanced category, where NZ$11 million, NZ$12 million or NZ$13 million buy reductions of 14, 28 or 42 days in the time an investor must spend in New Zealand.

What this amendment changes is what a file has to prove and how the money must have moved, not the capital it has to commit.

Three official texts, and what each one is

A reader checking these rules on 27 August 2026 finds three Immigration New Zealand documents saying different things.

The amended instructions sit in the appendices to the circular, and it is that wording an officer is directed to apply. The circular’s summary page is a description of the changes and, as above, does not match it. The circular also states that the amendments “will be published in the Immigration New Zealand Operational Manual in due course”.

The consolidated Operational Manual was reissued on 28 August 2026, but its BN8.10 page still shows the pre-amendment text, ending “Effective 01/04/2025”. A full reissue has therefore occurred since the circular was certified without incorporating the amendment; a reader working from the manual alone would not see the jurisdiction limb.

The guidance page for applicants carries the jurisdiction limb and goes further. It adds a condition the certified instruction does not contain — that the applicant “borrowed funds due to a change of circumstances outside of your control”.

The page renders the liquidation limb as an inability to “liquidate, transfer and invest the nominated assets or funds”, where the instruction says only “liquidate the nominated assets”. And it adds a sentence with no counterpart at all: “The funds you borrow must be located in the same country and/or jurisdiction as your nominated assets.”

The published documents do not settle whether that page anticipates a further amendment or states the current one too widely. They do settle which text an immigration officer is directed to apply.

What to watch

The 28 August reissue settles one marker but not the conflict. The manual still lacks the certified 12 August text. When checked on 27 August, the applicant page carried the additional “change of circumstances” condition.

Incorporation of the circular into the manual without a matching change to the applicant page would leave that condition as website-only; a further circular adopting the page’s wording would settle the point the other way. Neither step would necessarily correct the funds-versus-assets discrepancy between the circular’s summary and BN8.10.

Scale is worth holding in view. Immigration Minister Erica Stanford put the first year of the refreshed scheme at 609 applications from 1,988 people, with NZ$1.49 billion invested and a further NZ$2.415 billion in the pipeline as at April 2026. Those published figures do not break out files involving borrowed funds, so they do not show how many applicants the new limb reaches.

For an applicant relying on borrowed funds, the points verified here are that borrowing follows approval in principle, the loan is secured against nominated assets, and the funds must now be obtained in the same country or jurisdiction where those assets are located.

The certified text separately defines a commercial lending institution as a regulated entity that, in its ordinary course of business, provides debt financing to individuals on commercial terms.

When checked on 27 August, the “change of circumstances” condition appeared only in the guidance, yet that guidance is published by the department that assesses the application. Until the manual and the applicant page converge, the public record leaves applicants facing two formulations of the same borrowing route.