Active Investor Plus (AIP) Visa Eligibility: Every Threshold, Cited

The Active Investor Plus (AIP) visa is New Zealand's investor-residence pathway, run by Immigration New Zealand with investment vetting by New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE). This guide quotes the controlling instructions verbatim — the NZ$5M Growth and NZ$10M Balanced thresholds, the four-year holding period, the acceptable-investment categories — and identifies where the operational reality for wholesale investors differs from what the public-facing pages tell you.

Why the AIP visa exists, and who runs what

The Active Investor Plus visa was announced 9 September 2024 and came into effect 1 April 2025, replacing the earlier Investor 1 and Investor 2 visa categories. It is a residence-class visa under the Immigration Act 2009 with criteria set down in Immigration New Zealand's Operational Manual at instructions BJ1 (Acceptable Investments) and BJ4 (Active Investor Plus).

Two agencies are involved and the split is load-bearing:

Immigration New Zealand sets the residency criteria and decides applications. The current rules live at immigration.govt.nz/active-investor-plus-visa.
NZTE maintains the Acceptable Managed Funds list and assesses individual investment proposals against the "acceptable investment" definitions. Their guidance lives at nzte.govt.nz/active-investor-plus-visa-investor-funding.

A fund manager telling you their fund is "AIP-approved" is shorthand for "appears on NZTE's Acceptable Managed Funds list". That is a necessary condition for fund-based investment to count toward the visa, but the residence decision still sits with Immigration NZ — and the four-year monitoring obligation runs against you, not the fund.

The two categories — Growth and Balanced

Per Immigration NZ's published instructions (immigration.govt.nz/active-investor-plus-visa), the visa has two non-overlapping investment categories with different thresholds and different time-in-NZ requirements:

Growth Category

Minimum investment: NZ$5,000,000 in acceptable Growth investments.
Holding period: 4 years (48 months) from the date the investment is made.
Days in NZ during the 4-year period: at least 21 days.
Acceptable Growth investments include: direct investment in NZ businesses, managed funds investing in NZ private equity / venture capital / growth companies, and listed NZ equities (subject to NZTE acceptance of the specific vehicle).

Balanced Category

Minimum investment: NZ$10,000,000 in acceptable Balanced investments.
Holding period: 4 years, identical to Growth.
Days in NZ during the 4-year period: at least 105 days. Tradeoff: pay double the investment, and the in-country requirement quintuples.
Acceptable Balanced investments extend the Growth list to include philanthropy (capped contributions toward NZTE-acceptable causes), listed equities, bonds with NZ-issuer concentration, and certain residential property development with affordable-housing components.

The thresholds are absolute. Immigration NZ explicitly rejects "promised" capital and uncalled commitments — the visa is granted on evidence the money is invested in acceptable assets, not committed to be invested.

What counts as an "acceptable investment"

Both categories share the BJ1 instructions defining acceptable investments. Five conditions apply to every contribution counted toward the threshold:

Owned by the applicant (or their partner) — not held via a discretionary trust unless the applicant is the principal beneficiary and the trust is structured to satisfy INZ's evidentiary tests.
NZ-domiciled or NZ-deployed — the underlying investment activity must occur in New Zealand. An NZ-fund-of-funds that deploys offshore does not qualify.
At-risk capital — investments must carry genuine economic risk. Bank deposits, capital-protected products, and structured notes guaranteeing principal are explicitly excluded.
Not residential land (with narrow exceptions for new-build housing developments) — see the Overseas Investment Act 2005 interaction below.
Not used for personal benefit — the applicant cannot consume the underlying assets or services. A vineyard counts; the applicant's personal wine cellar does not.

The full BJ1 instructions are in the Immigration NZ Operational Manual. Practical interpretations are issued periodically by NZTE — these are not legally binding but are followed by INZ in practice.

The Acceptable Managed Funds list — what NZTE-pre-approval actually means

NZTE publishes a curated list of managed funds it considers acceptable for AIP investment. The list is the operational anchor for the visa: investing in a listed fund means NZTE accepts the vehicle's deployment story without requiring the applicant to submit their own investment proposal for assessment.

Important caveats that the public list page does not state plainly:

The list is not static. Funds are added and removed as their deployment posture changes. NZTE has removed previously-listed funds during 2025 without specifying AIP-specific reasons; managers can also withdraw voluntarily. Verify a fund's current listing on the NZTE page rather than relying on the manager's own claim.
Listing is not endorsement. NZTE accepting a fund for AIP purposes does not constitute investment advice or any assessment of return likelihood. The applicant remains responsible for due diligence on the manager.
Fund presence on the list does not bind the residence decision. INZ retains discretion to reject the application if other criteria (health, character, evidence of source-of-funds) are not met, regardless of how impeccable the fund choice was.
Category matters. NZTE flags each listed fund as Growth-eligible, Balanced-eligible, or both. Misallocating capital between categories at the time of investment cannot be unwound retrospectively without restarting the four-year clock.

The four-year holding period and ongoing monitoring

Per BJ4.45 instructions, the applicant must:

Maintain the qualifying investment at or above the threshold (NZ$5M or NZ$10M) continuously for the full four years. Dropping below threshold even briefly resets the residence clock.
Submit annual evidence to NZTE confirming the investment is held and within an acceptable vehicle. Failure to submit invokes a remediation period; persistent non-compliance triggers visa review.
Stay current with KYC/AML on the underlying vehicle — fund managers will request annual re-certification, separate from the residence-application paperwork.
Treat distributions and capital returns carefully — running yield is permissible (and tax-paid PIE distributions are common), but a return of capital that drops the principal below threshold must be reinvested into another acceptable vehicle within INZ's grace window.

The monitoring obligation is the most-overlooked part of the visa. Applicants frequently underestimate the administrative friction of staying compliant for 48 months while running an offshore career, residence, or business interests.

Residency milestones — what the visa actually grants you

The AIP visa grants residence on entry, not citizenship. The full residence-to-citizenship pathway:

Initial AIP residence visa — granted at first approval, valid while the holding period continues.
Permanent Resident Visa (PRV) — applicants who complete the four-year holding period and meet the days-in-NZ thresholds can apply for PRV under the standard residence-to-PRV process.
Citizenship — requires a separate application under the Citizenship Act 1977 administered by the Department of Internal Affairs. Standard rule: five years' presence in NZ within the preceding five years, with at least 1,350 days physically present, of which 240 days must be in the year immediately preceding the citizenship application.

The point is that AIP gets you residency-class status quickly (the visa class itself is residency) but citizenship still runs against the standard 1,350-day in-country requirement. For Growth Category applicants needing only 21 days during the four-year holding period, the citizenship pathway is materially longer than residence.

How wholesale-investor status interacts with AIP

Almost every NZTE-listed Acceptable Managed Fund is offered on a wholesale-only basis under Schedule 1 of the Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013. Wholesale-only means:

The fund does not publish a Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) or appear on the Disclose Register under the retail regime.
Subscription is gated by the investor self-certifying under one of the seven Schedule 1 pathways — typically the "large person" pathway (NZ$5M net assets) which all AIP-Growth applicants automatically clear, or the "eligible investor" pathway requiring an accountant- or lawyer-signed certificate.
The fund manager remains subject to fair-dealing obligations (Part 2 of FMCA), FSPR registration under the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Act 2008, and AML/CFT obligations under the AML/CFT Act 2009.

The September 2025 High Court ruling on the eligible-investor certificate (FMA v Du Val Group) tightens the procedural test for that pathway. AIP applicants relying on the eligible-investor pathway rather than the large-person pathway should expect their accountant or lawyer to insist on documented enquiry — see our FMCA Schedule 1 walkthrough for the certificate requirements after Du Val.

Overseas Investment Act 2005 — where AIP and OIA overlap

Investments above certain thresholds (currently NZ$100M for significant business assets, with lower thresholds for sensitive land and farm land) trigger separate consent requirements under the Overseas Investment Act 2005 administered by the Overseas Investment Office (Land Information New Zealand). AIP approval does not waive OIA consent. Applicants investing in residential development, farmland, or large business stakes must run both processes — OIA timelines (3-9 months for complex cases) frequently sit on the critical path between AIP approval and capital deployment.

Tax treatment of AIP investments

The tax position depends on the investment vehicle, not the visa class:

PIE funds (Portfolio Investment Entity) — distributions are tax-paid at the investor's Prescribed Investor Rate (PIR), capped at 28% per the Inland Revenue PIE guidance. For high-income AIP applicants this is often materially below the marginal rate (39% above NZ$180,000 of taxable income for 2024-25).
Limited Partnerships (LP) — taxable income flows through to investors at their marginal rate. AIP applicants who become NZ tax-resident face the full 39% top rate on flow-through income.
Foreign Investment Fund (FIF) regime — applicants retaining overseas investment portfolios while on AIP residence may be caught by the FIF rules (NZ$50,000 cost-basis threshold). This is a separate tax-residence issue distinct from the AIP investment itself but consistently underestimated by new arrivals.
Transitional resident exemption — first-time NZ tax-residents qualify for a 48-month exemption from tax on most non-NZ-sourced income, per the Income Tax Act 2007 s HR 8. This aligns with the AIP four-year period but applies once per person; AIP applicants who use it incorrectly forfeit it.

What the immigration.govt.nz page does not tell you plainly

Three operational realities that fund managers and immigration advisers can confirm but that the public guidance pages do not surface:

Capital deployment is not instant. NZTE-listed Acceptable Managed Funds frequently have quarterly or bi-annual investment windows. Committing capital at the moment of visa approval may mean the four-year clock effectively starts 3-9 months later when first calls are honoured.
The "active" in Active Investor Plus is mostly residual. The earlier Investor 1 / Investor 2 visa categories required documented "active" engagement with NZ businesses; AIP softened this expectation. Most listed managed funds satisfy the engagement test by virtue of the manager's own portfolio-company involvement.
Application processing typically takes 4-9 months. The published "indicative processing time" is shorter; in practice AML/source-of-funds verification on multi-million-dollar transfers is the rate-limiting step. Plan capital deployment around the realistic timeline, not the published indicative.

Practical sequence — from interest to invested

Confirm category. Growth (NZ$5M, 21 days) vs Balanced (NZ$10M, 105 days). Choice depends on liquid capital and intended NZ residency posture.
Source-of-funds preparation. INZ requires documentation of fund origins consistent with the AML/CFT Act 2009. Start the document trail before applying — it typically takes 4-6 weeks to assemble for complex source histories.
Pre-apply NZTE review (optional). Direct-investment proposals can be submitted to NZTE for pre-clearance against acceptable-investment definitions. Listed Acceptable Managed Funds do not need pre-clearance.
Apply via INZ portal. Online application with supporting documents; first-stage processing typically 2-3 months.
Approval-in-principle. INZ issues a letter confirming the application meets non-financial criteria; investment must then be made within the window specified (typically 12 months).
Deploy capital. Subscription to acceptable investments via wholesale-investor processes. Most NZTE-listed funds will require a Schedule 1 self-certification (the AIP letter alone is not enough — the FMCA rules apply independently).
Final visa grant. INZ grants the residence visa once deployment evidence is provided.
Annual NZTE confirmation. Submit annual evidence the investment is still held, for the four-year holding period.

Source list (every link cited inline above)

This page is informational, not advice

Active Investor Plus visa criteria and Acceptable Managed Funds listings are summarised from public Immigration NZ and NZTE materials as at 3 June 2026. The visa was introduced 1 April 2025 and the criteria have been amended once since (minor instruction-level changes May 2025). Always consult a New Zealand-licensed immigration adviser, financial adviser, lawyer, or accountant for advice on your specific circumstances. Wholesale Investor NZ is a directory service, is not a licensed Financial Advice Provider, and does not provide regulated personal advice or immigration advice.