Active Investor Plus, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise

The challenge

In November 2022 Immigration NZ established the Active Investment Plus (AIP) Visa Scheme. At the time, the role of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) was to connect New Zealand businesses with investor migrants. NZTE did this by designating acceptable direct investments for the migrants applying for the scheme.

NZTE’s key objective was to optimise the application process. The team wanted to reduce effort for the business customer, and also reduce the high levels of manual work, case management and communication required from NZTE staff. 

The response

NZTE needed the fast development of an online application for their customers that could be linked with their existing technology. It was the perfect candidate service to pilot with the FormBuilder.govt tool. The service has since transitioned to Invest New Zealand.

The Business Connect team partnered with NZTE to deliver the service in 2 phases:

• The delivery of the application form and case management system;
• The implementation of APIs that NZTE use to connect their customer relationship management software with Business Connect.

The outcomes

• Efficient service design and technical development delivered a working prototype within four weeks of initial discussions.
• An intuitive, user-friendly application form with help text, data pre-population from APIs such as NZ Post and New Zealand Business Number, and dynamic logic so that applicants only answer questions related to them.
• The new service launched in May 2023. This resulted in increased customer satisfaction and higher-quality applications.
• Invest New Zealand took over management of the service in 2025. It continues to streamline interactions between applicants and case workers, create more efficient processes and automate most data entry.

FormBuilder helped us avoid a long procurement process, and ensured confidence in meeting our data and government requirements via MBIE accreditation. Our business clients now have a high-quality, guided customer experience that links smoothly with our existing processes and technology.

Claire Hinton, Product Manager, NZTE