On 1 April 2025, Immigration New Zealand changed the settings of the Active Investor Plus Visa: the single minimum investment of NZD $15 million (or its weighted equivalent) was replaced by two investment categories — a Growth category at NZD $5 million held for at least three years, and a Balanced category at NZD $10 million held for at least five years. If you were quoted the old $15 million figure by an adviser, a bank, or a fund manager, that figure no longer describes the programme, and the structure of what counts as a qualifying investment changed alongside the dollar amount.
The detail below comes from Immigration New Zealand's investor category news page, published 16 December 2025 and last updated 4 September 2026 according to the page itself.
What this visa is actually designed to do
INZ describes the Active Investor Plus category as intended to attract investors who take an active role in helping companies access global knowledge networks, capital, and markets. The stated policy goal is higher business productivity and job growth — not passive parking of capital.
That framing matters more than it might look. The word "active" is doing real work in the programme's design, and it shapes which investments are treated as qualifying and how the categories are weighted. Anyone comparing this route against a Caribbean citizenship-by-investment programme, a Portuguese fund subscription, or a US EB-5 placement is comparing different instruments with different expectations of involvement, not simply different price tags.
What changed on 1 April 2025
According to INZ, the changes were made to simplify the investment process, and the headline element was the introduction of two categories:
- Growth category — focused on higher-risk investments, including managed funds and direct investments in New Zealand businesses. Minimum investment of NZD $5 million, held for a minimum period of three years.
- Balanced category — focused on mixed investments, with the ability to choose ones that are lower risk. Minimum investment of NZD $10 million, held over five years.
The other change INZ lists is the reduction in the minimum investment amount itself: from NZD $15 million (or weighted equivalent) down to NZD $5 million for Growth and NZD $10 million for Balanced. The same page also refers to a broadening of scope as part of the April 2025 package, and lists further changes beyond the two we've summarised here — the full list sits on the INZ page linked above, and it's worth reading directly rather than relying on a secondhand summary, including ours.
The two-tier structure is the part that changes planning. Under one threshold, the only question was whether you could commit the amount. Under two, there's a genuine trade-off to work through: a lower capital commitment with a shorter holding period but higher-risk placements, or double the capital over a longer period with more room to choose lower-risk instruments.
The pre-change numbers INZ published
The same page gives a picture of how the category performed under the old settings, which is useful context for anyone trying to gauge how selective this route has been.
Between September 2022 and 31 March 2025, INZ received 115 applications covering 362 applicants. An application may include multiple applicants — partners and dependent children — which is why the two figures differ so much.
Of those 115 applications:
- 46 had been approved for a resident visa
- 13 were withdrawn by the applicant
- 33 were granted approval in principle
Those are modest volumes for a two-and-a-half-year window in a national investor programme, and they're part of the reason the settings were revisited. The 13 withdrawals are worth noticing too: people entered the process and then stepped back out of it, which is what tends to happen when a capital requirement or an investment definition turns out not to fit the applicant's actual asset structure.
INZ states that the page also sets out how the April 2025 changes have affected application and investment volumes since then. We're not going to quote post-change figures we can't verify from the material in front of us — the numbers on that page were last updated 4 September 2026, so check them at source if the current run-rate is relevant to your decision.
Who this affects most
People who priced this out before April 2025. The $15 million figure is the one that circulated widely, and it ruled the category out for a lot of people whose liquid capital sat well below it. A $5 million Growth-category minimum is a materially different proposition. That doesn't mean the route now works for anyone at that level — the investment type, the holding period, and the rest of the category's requirements all still apply — but the arithmetic that produced a "no" two years ago may not produce the same answer today.
Applicants who filed under the old settings. If your application sits somewhere in the pipeline from the pre-April 2025 period, including the approval-in-principle stage, how the new settings interact with your file is a specific technical question about transitional treatment. It isn't something to infer from a news page, and it's the kind of question worth putting to a licensed adviser with your actual documents in hand.
Investors weighing risk tolerance, not just capital. The Growth category is explicitly the higher-risk lane. Managed funds and direct investment in New Zealand businesses carry a different exposure profile than the mixed, partly lower-risk mix contemplated under Balanced. Someone holding $10 million who is unwilling to take concentrated business risk may find the Balanced category the better structural fit even at twice the capital, and someone with $5 million has a single lane available rather than a choice.
Families. Applications averaged just over three applicants each under the old settings, which reflects the reality that this is usually a family decision. Dependent-child rules, ages, and documentation are where investor applications tend to get complicated, well after the investment question has been settled.
What to watch next
The honest answer is: the post-change statistics on that INZ page. A programme that reduces its minimum by two-thirds and adds a second tier is running an experiment, and application and investment volumes are how the government will judge whether the settings landed where intended. Categories that draw very little interest get revisited; categories that draw a rush of interest sometimes get tightened. Neither is a prediction — it's the pattern worth keeping an eye on.
Also watch the definitional edges. "Broadening of scope" and "simplifying the investment process" are the parts of a policy change that get interpreted through operational guidance over time, and how an investment is characterised can matter as much as its size.
If New Zealand is one of several jurisdictions on your list, you can read our overview of the New Zealand investor route and request a free assessment of your situation here — particularly useful if you're comparing it against Portuguese, Maltese, or Caribbean options, where the capital, holding periods, and residence expectations are structured quite differently.
Questions this change tends to raise
Is the three-year holding period under Growth the whole commitment? The three years is the minimum investment period stated by INZ for the Growth category; residence conditions and the investment requirement are separate strands of a visa and shouldn't be treated as the same clock.
Does a lower minimum mean a lower bar overall? Not something to assume. The capital figure came down; the rest of the category's requirements are their own matter, and a programme built around "active" involvement is likely to keep expecting evidence of it.
Can the two categories be combined? INZ presents them as two categories with distinct minimums and holding periods. How a mixed portfolio would be characterised against those definitions is exactly the sort of question that needs a look at the actual investment structure rather than a general answer.
Does New Zealand residence lead to citizenship? That's a separate statutory question from the visa category, and it's governed by residence and physical-presence rules rather than by investment amount. Worth separating in your own planning from the outset.
Nothing in this piece is an assessment of any individual case, and we're not in a position to tell anyone from a news page whether a route fits them. What we can say is that the numbers that ruled this programme out for many people before April 2025 are no longer the current numbers, which is reason enough to look again. An RCIC can assess your specific case against the current settings and against the alternatives.
If you'd like a professional read on where New Zealand sits among your options, you can book a consultation with our team.