Why have a pre-application meeting?
Pre-application meetings will help you prepare a clearly reasoned application that contains all the information we will need to assess your application.
You will be able to:
- ask questions about presenting specific aspects of your application
- discuss technical issues relevant to your application
- ask questions about the application process.
These meetings are likely to help first-time investors submitting an application under a complex pathway or where the intended investment has unique characteristics. Pre-applications meetings are less useful when they are used to introduce an investor or investment to the team.
The meeting will be held as a MS Teams Meeting, unless special circumstances arise that require a face-to-face meeting.
Who should attend the meeting?
We recommend that you and your advisors attend the meeting.
We will normally have one of our senior staff members attend, together with one of our staff who assesses applications.
If you are an advisor attending on behalf of a client, you must detail who the applicant is when you request the meeting, as well as the type of consent being applied for. The Overseas Investment Office does not hold pre-application meetings for unnamed parties.
How should I prepare for the meeting?
We will not review draft applications for consent as part of the pre-application meeting, but we recommend that you prepare an early draft version of your application and your investment plan (if applicable) prior to the meeting. This will help ensure that your thinking and rationale is sufficiently advanced to be able to discuss key aspects of your application.
You should be prepared to answer questions about your draft application and investment plan (if applicable), and about any information and evidence you plan to provide with your application.
What will be discussed at the meeting?
The meeting is an opportunity to address questions you may have about the application process and to confirm our information requirements. We can provide advice on what a quality application looks like and highlight any issues or matters that may need to be addressed in your application.
What won’t be discussed at the meeting?
We do not review draft applications for consent, and cannot commit to assessment timeframes for specific applications.
We do not provide legal advice and we cannot indicate what the likely outcome of a particular application might be.
How do I arrange a pre-application meeting?
To request a meeting please follow this link and complete the “I want to request a pre-application meeting” form. Pre-application requests, along with any supporting documentation, should be submitted two weeks before your desired meeting date to allow for preparation time.
Please include information about the proposed investment and any issues you would like to discuss in your request for a pre-application meeting. We will review these and provide you with a proposed agenda prior to the meeting.
If a call with an assessor will more efficiently resolve your issues, we are likely to propose this instead to ensure we are focusing our resources where they can provide the most value.