If you are considering investment immigration to UK, you may be familiar with the UK Investor visa. The UK Investor visa is a Tier 1 category of UK Business visa available to eligible applicants for UK immigration. Read on to learn all about the UK Investor visa (also known as a UK Tier 1 Investor visa), including Investor visa eligibility for applicants information, and for a better understanding of for the UK investor immigration visa.
All about UK Investor Visa
- The UK Investor visa is available to applicants who are able to invest a minimum of £2,000,000 in the country.
- Applicants who are approved for this type of Investor visa are eligible to remain in the country for up to three years and four months, with the possibility to extending for two additional years.
- Investor visa holders can even apply for settlement after two, three, and five years if they invest £10 million, £5 million, and £2 million, respectively.
- Those on a UK Investor visa are also granted permission to study or work in the country, so long as they are not employed as a sportsperson.
- In addition to their original investment of £2 million, applicants for UK Investor visas are also subject to a fee of £1,623. This application fee is in addition to the healthcare surcharge fees. Contact us for more information about health surcharge fees.
- UK Investor visa holders are also allowed to bring their family members to the country. Eligible family members for Investor visas are known as “dependents”, and generally include spouses, partners, and children.
- Please note, students who are looking to pursue Investment immigration to the UK could be eligible for the UK Investor immigration visa. Please note that those whose associated student costs were covered by an abroad scholarship or government must write to obtain a contract from the entity that is financially covering their studies, specifying that they can either re-enter or continue residing in the country as part of the ongoing terms and conditions.
Eligibility requirements
- Investor visa eligibility for the UK Tier 1 Investor visa requires applicants to fulfil the following requirements:
- Invest funds that are located in a regulated financial entity.
- Invest funds that are disposable (i.e. able to be invested) in the country.
- Possess a UK bank account, which will act as the recipient of the funds (while the funds can be held abroad during the application process, they should ultimately end up in this UK account).
- Be 18+ years old.
- Credibly establish that the funds are the applicant’s (or those of their spouse/partner).
When to apply
- Applicants should apply for their Investor visa a minimum of three months prior to their intended date of arrival in the UK.
- Applicants who are applying from abroad should know about the status of their application in as few as three weeks.
- Please note it is occasionally possible to pay for an expediated decision. If you are applying from within the country, you can get a decision in as few as five days, for an additional £500.
Where to apply
- Those who are applying for Investor visa from abroad can begin by contacting us here to help them with the application.
- If you are already legally in the UK, you presumably are either already there on an Investor visa (in which case applying from within the country entails applying to extend your visa, rather than applying for a new one) or you are there on another visa, which means that applying from within the country essentially requires you to switch into the Investor visa category.
- To switch to Investor visa from another UK visa category, or to apply to extend your Investor visa, contact us.
Required documents
- UK residence and citizenship services require you to provide the below documents and materials. Please note that documents not originally written in either English or Welsh will need to be certifiably translated into one of those two languages:
- Passport (valid, with blank space for an investor visa).
- Certificate of criminal record (In order to make sure you do not have any previous or outstanding criminal convictions you are required to present a certificate from any of your previous countries of residence, i.e. from any countries where you resided for more than a year over the last decade).
- Tuberculosis test result (only relevant for applicants arriving from countries on this list).
- Proof of investment, including:
- Demonstration of the specific amount of funds that you have and where they are located (i.e. what bank, fund, etc).
- If the would-be invested monies were received within the past 2 years—Demonstration of how you earned or otherwise obtained the money (i.e. through specific work or via other investments, etc).
- Proof that you will be able to transfer the funds into the country.
- Proof that you will be able to convert whatever currency the funds are represented by into GBP (British Pound Sterling).
- Proof of your UK bank account
- In order to demonstrate that you have opened a bank account in the country, you need to obtain and submit a written letter that is the following:
- Sent at least 3 months from when you submit your application.
- Sent from an official who is considered an authorized representative of the financial institution that will receive your money.
- Contain your name and all relevant financial account information (including number of account).
- State that the institution is under the regulatory authority of the Financial Conduct Authority.
- State that all relevant investigations against money-laundering have been conducted in pursuit of authorizing your funds.
- State that you have indeed applied and received permission to open a bank account for the specific purpose of investing £2,000,000.
- If the investment will be made through your spouse or partner’s money (i.e. not using own), you must submit the following documents:
- Marriage certificate or proof of the longstanding nature of your relationship, which in order to be considered valid, must involve two years of cohabitation.
- Your partner’s written declaration of his or her intent to let you manage the to-be-invested monies in the country.
- A written statement from a third-party legal advisor attesting to the validity of the above agreement.
- Please note that UK residence and citizenship services may request other materials and documents from the investor, depending on the nature of his or her specific application.
- In addition to providing the above required documents, applicants must also submit their biometric information (fingerprints and photos), at an official visa application center. In addition to being a security requirement, submitting your biometric information will allow you to ultimately pick up your biometric resident permit post-arrival in the UK.
- Contact us for more information.
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