Evidence of funds to support your study

You must provide evidence to show you have enough money to support yourself while you study in NZ. Find out what you can provide to support to your application.

Evidence and information about your funds

When we assess your visa application, we must:

• be able to verify that the evidence you provide about your funds is genuine, and
• be confident that these funds will be available to you while you are in New Zealand.

Verifying evidence of your funds

Your funds must be in your name, or the name of your financial guarantor or sponsor. 

If we cannot properly verify the source of your funds, we cannot accept them as evidence that you have enough money to support yourself while you are in New Zealand.

We find it difficult to verify some evidence of funds including:

• gold loans and Kisan Credit Card (KCC) loans
• funds held by the post office or cooperative societies
• volatility or mutual funds
• bonds
• property sales, and
• agricultural income.

Using a financial guarantor

You can use a financial guarantor but we can only accept them if:

• they are your immediate family member — that is, your partner or spouse, a parent, sibling, grandparent, or parent-in-law — and
• you can prove your relationship to them.

Evidence you can provide

To support your application, you can provide a range of financial information.

Banking information

You can provide:

• bank/transaction statements for the past 3 months (we may ask for more than 3 months in some cases)
• copies of relevant bank deposit statements or certificates
• statements or certificates showing fixed term deposits at least 6 months old.

If the bank account you are using as evidence has been opened recently or the statements show any large deposits, you must explain where this money has come from and provide evidence to support this. For example, provide evidence to show that you sold an asset and used the money to open the account, or have transferred money from one bank account to the other.

Information about assets or loans

You can provide:

• an education loan sanction letter from an acceptable financial institution
• stock transaction reports, or
• sale of property agreements.

We do not accept funds sourced from property sales, gold loans or KCC loans unless:

• you or your financial guarantor have held those funds in bank accounts for 6 months or longer, and
• we can verify the source of the funds.

Loan sanction letters

We only accept education loans from nationalised or multi-national banks that are secured against fixed assets that belong to you or your financial guarantor.

If you provide a loan sanction letter it must mention: 

• the security
• moratorium period — that is, how long before you need to start repaying the loan
• interest payable
• repayment, and
• details or a copy of the security offered for the loan.

You also need to provide evidence of how you will repay the loan.

Provident fund accounts

We only accept public or employee provident fund accounts if they are supported by documents confirming your employment such as an Income Tax Return, Form 16, salary statements or a employer reference letter from your employer.

Information about your income

You can provide:

• tax returns that show your income and saving patterns
• evidence of income generated from your assets — for example, if you own a rental property provide proof of ownership and evidence of the tax you have paid on the income
• statements showing income generated from employment — for example:
• a letter from your employer confirming the position you held, how long you were employed for and what you were paid, or
• if you were self-employed, recent business tax returns with an income statement, or recent bank statements showing daily business transactions.

We do not accept funds sourced from agricultural income unless:

• you or your sponsor have held those funds in bank accounts for 6 months or longer, and
• we can verify the source of the funds.

If you are studying for more than 12 months

If you plan to study in New Zealand for more than a year provide:

• a payment plan that explains how you will fund your future years of study, and
• evidence to support this that we can verify.