Marcus Beveridge, MD of QCL, delivered a paper on New Zealand’s Golden Visa 16 months after its inception. This was a 2-day conference. The Immigration Minister attended as did the immigration spokespersons for NZ First, The Greens and The Labour Party. Someone liked the debate to a school principal (the Minister) scolding naughty students. There is an inevitability that there will be a lot of trash talk about immigration per se and our regulatory framework as our election looms. It is as predictable as the sun rising each morning and to be frank, the narrative remains the same as we struggle to articulate what works best for Aotearoa/New Zealand. At times, a complex matter.

To date, the Greens have not expressly stated that they will repeal the Golden Visa although once again, one would imagine some sort of inevitability about this. But they have questioned the efficacy of the OIA changes allowing AIP resident visa holders to purchase residential homes over $5M in value. At this stage, political outcomes in November are really anybody’s guess.

Returning to the paper, you can see the PowerPoint yourself in the link below. It contains a lot of information. Some of this was covered in a previous article entitled “15 Months Down the Track: The Active Investor Plus Visa is Delivering” but there is a lot more detail contained in the paper, which can be found in our online law library here.

A couple of memorable factors:

• Of the 800 or so AIP applications to date, less than 5% has been declined or withdrawn. This indicates that those who are acting on the lion’s share of these applications are doing an excellent job (including us of course – all of our applications under this program have been successful to date).
• MBIE have advised that they are doing a 12-month review of the Business Investor Visa in November and they are performing an outcomes evaluation for AIP.
• As of 16 July, they have received 6 BIV applications and approved 3.

Bradley So, Director of Queen City Law, has nurtured about 10 new applications which will be more than the total that the government has received to date. Maybe Bradley should be put in charge of attractions? As noted in previous articles, the BIV program works well for firms like us because we have wrap-around service including specialist immigration, business, and commercial lawyers.

Nevertheless, Marcus mentioned at the conference that this is can be considered a modest yield of applicants. The iterations of this visa from Long Term Business Visa to Entrepreneur Visa to Business Investor Visa have at times reflected the danger of having career bureaucrats design programs that could have been much more attractive and workable. Including, for example, regional components and even perhaps consider topical issues such as succession planning. We lament this and are probably better placed than anyone to comment on these issues given the cross-over between commercial law and immigration that we deal with on a daily basis.

We will endeavour to have input into the November review to make the program more attractive. It’s also acknowledged there is some private sector input but either the bureaucrats are not listening or it is being poorly executed, and perhaps the bar has been set too high or perhaps the inherent complexities of acquiring businesses or a substantial shareholding in a NZ business as a going concern are not properly appreciated. A pity, given that if it was well designed it could unleash improved productivity and better results for New Zealand.

The figure of 97% going into managed funds and 3% into direct investments is staggering and may also be good cause for some reform to actually encourage more active investment given the discount from $10M to $5M and the reduced term onshore from 105 days to 3 weeks. These are contentious issues but there is cynical analysis that current private credit settings often see reflect repatriation of the 4 major Australian banks’ commercial loans back to Australia with no actual “growth” at all. This analysis is cynical and there are, of course, obvious exceptions.

Please also note our last two articles in our News and Views section which further comment on these points.

Transfer of Funds

One of the interactive components of Marcus’ presentation that triggered a lively debate between Marcus and some of the attendees was about the transfer of money and source of wealth. Although the decline rate is a small percentage, there is visibility on quite a large number of detailed PPI letters being designed particularly for Sino applications, and an awareness that some of the awareness that some of the Sino applications have been declined or withdrawn. Some of this may be connected to the announcements of other governments in relation to tax compliance and other issues, and some of the PPI correspondence contain bizarre references to government ordinances that may not be accurate. It may not be the existing law of that land.

One of the attendees also noted that she had been put through the paces for her North American clients and that the forensic accounting approach that INZ was approaching seemed over the top. There was also a comment made about INZ requesting evidence that was 20 years old (which is not available in many jurisdictions).

Accordingly, this is where actual value rather than form-filling comes into play. The same could be said around some clients’ wealth preservation requirements as despite New Zealand’s weak currency not all AIP clients have money to burn and they are looking for prudent investments.

Marcus is also chairing the Legalwise Immigration Law Symposium 2026 on 13 August. More details can be found on the Legalwise website here.

Hopefully, therefore for the keen-eyed, you can see why there are various reasons why there it is worth instructing our counsel to assist you with navigating the immigration maze. At all times, the firm focuses on adding bottom line value to our clients. Given the political imperative referred to above, for those of you still sitting on the fence, shake a leg and get in touch.

It was also good to meet industry colleagues, INZ management (current and former) and others passionate about the industry.

For further questions, please contact Marcus, Tom, Luke, Brad or Hannah.