If you have been looking at New Zealand’s investor visa, one small change to a government website is worth knowing about. Invest New Zealand has started publishing its list of approved direct investments again, alongside the list of approved managed funds it never stopped publishing.
That sounds like housekeeping. For anyone actually choosing where to put five million dollars, it is more than that.
What the Growth category asks for
The Active Investor Plus visa splits into two categories, and the one this affects is Growth. Immigration New Zealand sets out the shape of it on its own page: at least NZD $5 million invested for 36 months, and at least 21 days spent in New Zealand across that period (Immigration New Zealand · Active Investor Plus visa).
What you are allowed to put the money into is the part that matters here. In the Growth category that means direct investments into New Zealand businesses, managed funds, or philanthropy capped at 20 percent of the total. Not listed shares, not bonds, not property. Those sit in the Balanced category, which asks for more money over a longer term.
So a Growth applicant is choosing between two real options, and until recently only one of them was visible.
From December 2026 there will be a third. Build to rent housing becomes an acceptable Growth investment, though only through an approved managed fund and not by building anything yourself. I have set out what that does and does not allow in build to rent joining the Active Investor Plus Growth category.
Why a list going quiet was a problem
Invest New Zealand kept publishing approved managed funds throughout. Approved direct investments came off the platform for a stretch, and the archived version of that page from January this year says it plainly: the Live Deals platform would focus on approved managed funds, with direct investments no longer shown.
Picture what that does. A New Zealand company goes through the work of getting approved as an acceptable direct investment, and then sits in a directory nobody can read. An applicant with five million dollars and a background in, say, food manufacturing has no way to find the food manufacturer down the road who has already been cleared. The fund managers are listed. The companies are not.
The money followed the visibility, and the gap is not subtle. Immigration New Zealand’s own figures for Growth category capital committed as at 31 March 2026 put managed funds at NZD $725.4 million and direct investments at NZD $20.4 million (Immigration New Zealand · investor category statistics). Roughly thirty-five dollars into funds for every one dollar into a business.
I would not read that purely as investor preference. It is hard to choose something you cannot see.
What is on the list now
As at 4 August 2026, the Invest New Zealand page states that there are 94 acceptable direct investments (Invest New Zealand · direct investments). Not all of them appear. The page is explicit that some companies have chosen not to be included, so the published list is a subset of what is actually approved.
The managed fund list sits alongside it and was last updated on 31 July 2026 (Invest New Zealand · managed funds). Both lists move. Funds and companies get added and removed, so the version you read in the morning is not necessarily the version your adviser read last month.
Two cautions, and they come from Invest New Zealand rather than from me. Being on the list is not an endorsement or a recommendation by Invest New Zealand or the New Zealand government. And all of these investments carry risk, including the managed ones.
Why some people will want the direct route
Here is the part I find genuinely interesting about this change.
A managed fund asks you for capital and nothing else. That suits plenty of people, and there is no shame in it. If your plan is residence and a quiet life, handing the decisions to a fund manager is the sensible choice.
But a fair number of people who can write a five million dollar cheque did not get that money by being passive. They built something. They ran a manufacturing business, or founded a software company, or spent twenty years senior in an industry where they know everyone worth knowing. For that person, taking an equity stake in a New Zealand business in their own sector is a different proposition from buying fund units. They bring the money, and they also bring customers, suppliers, governance experience, and a phone book.
That was the original point of the policy. Not just importing capital, but importing the people and the know-how that come attached to it. A published list is what makes that matchable, because an adviser can now point a client at companies that fit what the client actually knows.
If you are already thinking in these terms, my post on running a business across the Tasman covers the practical side of operating in both countries at once, which is where a lot of these investors end up.
Who this is not for
I will be blunt, because the honest answer saves people money.
Most people who write to me about New Zealand are not investor visa candidates, and that is completely fine. If you are moving for work, the work visa routes and the points-tested residence pathways are the real conversation, and they do not ask you for five million dollars. The Active Investor Plus visa is a narrow door for a small number of people.
If you are one of them, the direct investment route is now a genuine option rather than a theoretical one, and it is worth putting on the table before you default to a fund. What it is not is a shortcut. The source of funds work on an investor application is the heaviest part of the file, and it is where these applications come unstuck. Where the money came from, how it got here, and whether what you bought actually meets the instructions.
The list being public does not change any of that. It just means you can finally see both of your options before you choose one.
If you want to talk it through, the residence visa side of my practice is where this sits, and I will tell you honestly if this is not your pathway.
