Renewing your AEWV employer accreditation

You do not need to renew your accreditation if you do not want to employ any new migrants on AEWVs or support an AEWV worker with further visa applications. For example, if you have not used your current accreditation or valid job tokens, and do not plan to hire migrants.

If you do not renew your employer accreditation

Your employer accreditation will expire automatically on the expiry date. If you have any job tokens available, they will expire when your accreditation expires.

After your accreditation expires, you can still access your employer dashboard in Immigration Online.

You can continue to employ any migrants already working for you (where their visa conditions only permit employment with an accredited employer) until their visas expire. If they want to continue to work for you on another AEWV, you must be accredited.

If you do not renew your accreditation, you cannot:

• apply for another job check to hire new workers
• support a worker to apply for another AEWV (if the length of their current AEWV is less than the total amount of time they can stay in New Zealand)
• support a migrant worker to apply for a Skilled Migrant Category Resident Visa, Work to Residence Visa, Transport Work to Residence Visa, Care Workforce Work to Residence Visa or Straight to Residence Visa.

If you renew your accreditation, it will last for:

• 24 months, if you have standard or high-volume accreditation
• 12 months, if you have triangular employer accreditation.

If you renew any accreditation that expired more than 12 months ago, then your accreditation will only be valid for 12 months.

When you renew your accreditation, you can change your accreditation type. For example, you can go from a high-volume accreditation to standard accreditation.

Franchisee accreditation

Franchisee accreditation closed on 16 June 2024.

If you currently have franchisee accreditation, you can remain on this accreditation type until it expires. If you apply to renew your accreditation, you can change to a standard, high-volume or triangular employer accreditation.

Check you are applying for the correct accreditation type for your business. If you apply for the wrong accreditation type, you will need to apply again and pay another application fee. You cannot get a refund of the first application fee.

What type of employer accreditation you need

We can process your application faster if you supply all the required evidence and supporting documents.

Required evidence

Upload the documents listed in the ‘Evidence to provide’ section on Immigration Online to show how you met the accreditation requirements and the commitments you made during your initial application.

Optional and further evidence

To help us process your application faster, you can upload supporting documents in the 'Optional evidence' or 'Further evidence' sections to show:

• evidence of being a viable and genuinely operating business
• compliance with business standards, and
• settlement support given to AEWV workers.

Supporting documents can include, but are not limited to:

• latest available evidence showing your business is viable and genuinely operating — check our examples of evidence:

Financial evidence for your AEWV employer accreditation application

• GST or PAYE records showing your business’ Inland Revenue number
• evidence showing that you provided settlement support information within 1 month of the AEWV worker starting to work for you
• the latest organisation chart (do not include employee names), showing your business structure and positions to help us understand the nature of your business operation.

If you do not provide this information and we need to request it, your application will take longer to process.

Evidence of settlement support

Examples of evidence of settlement support include:

• copies of any documents or information you gave your AEWV worker to help them settle in New Zealand, for example, emails to the worker, letters and invoices from relocation specialists or settlement training courses completed
• copies of your onboarding or induction policy.

If you declare that you have not provided settlement information to all AEWV workers recruited since your last accreditation application within 1 month of them starting work, you will be asked to provide supporting evidence with your application.

Evidence can include:

• an explanation why settlement support was not given, for example you have not employed any AEWV workers during the accreditation period
• copies of policies implemented to make sure this does not happen again
• documents showing steps taken to ensure that this information will be provided in the future.

Accredited employer requirements to help settle AEWV workers in New Zealand

If we ask you for further information, we send you a link to upload up to 5 additional documents.

If you have more than 5 documents to upload, follow the instructions in our Enhanced Immigration Online User Guide under section '4.4 Correspondence'.

Enhanced Immigration Online — User Guide PDF 5MB

Files cannot be larger than 10 MB. If you have issues uploading a document, you can try:

• reducing the file size of the document, or
• splitting the document into multiple smaller documents.

We recommend you allow at least 5 weeks to apply to renew your employer accreditation.

Check our wait times page to find up-to-date information on how long we are taking to process applications.

Work visa and employer accreditation wait times

We will send you an email 2 weeks before your employer accreditation expiry date to remind you that your accreditation is about to expire.

If you want to renew your accreditation, you must submit your application before your accreditation expires in order to be eligible for interim accreditation. If you do not want to renew your accreditation, you do not need to do anything.

If you qualify for interim accreditation, we will email you to let you know we will give you interim accreditation when your accreditation expires.

We will give you interim accreditation based on your current accreditation type and the type you have applied for.

Your interim accreditation will be:

• standard accreditation, if you held standard accreditation or you applied for standard accreditation
• high-volume accreditation, if you held high-volume accreditation and applied for high-volume accreditation
• high-volume accreditation, if you held triangular employer accreditation and applied for high-volume accreditation
• high-volume accreditation, if you held franchisee accreditation and applied for high-volume accreditation
• high-volume accreditation, if you held high-volume or franchisee accreditation and applied for triangular employer accreditation
• triangular employer accreditation, if you held triangular employer accreditation and applied for triangular employer accreditation.

If you have an interim employer accreditation, you can:

• apply for a new job check
• use an existing job token to ask a migrant to apply for an AEWV.

You must have the right type of interim accreditation for the number and type of jobs you want to fill.

If the interim accreditation we have given you is different to the accreditation you have applied for, you must meet the requirements of the interim accreditation.