CLEARING THE CONFUSION: DO YOUR NEW ZEALAND STUDENT VISA FUNDS HAVE TO BE SIX MONTHS OLD?

If you are putting together a student visa application for New Zealand, you’ve probably heard the following claim before:

“Your funds must be over six months old or your visa will be refused.”

This is a common misconception that causes unnecessary worry. Although your funds should be satisfactory, how long you’ve had them is a trivial detail that plays only a small part in how Immigration New Zealand (INZ) decides if you pass the requirements in practice. INZ cares much more about the source of your funds, and whether those funds are genuinely available to you for your studies. Let’s keep this simple.

What the Immigration Policy Actually Says?

Immigration New Zealand operates under official immigration instructions, not social media tips and agent whispers. The immigration instructions are the only instructions officers are obliged to accept. The instruction relevant to funds for student visas is U3.20.20, which reads as follows:

• Funds must be from a genuine source
• Funds must be genuinely available for the student’s living costs
• Immigration officers may consider the period the funds have been held

The period during which funds have been held is optional. Nowhere in the instructions is it stated that funds must be six months old. That’s simply not part of policy. So Where Did That ‘Over Six Months’ Myth Come From?

The likely origin of the six-month-old is the Student Visa Information Sheet that INZ puts online. The information sheet is aimed at first-time student visa applicants and is intentionally vague and open-ended. It is designed to give casual visitors to the INZ website some simple advice
that a first-timer might be able to work with.

The sheet recommends providing at least three to six months of bank transaction history. Note the wording: this says ‘providing’ bank history, not six-month-old funds as so many have come to interpret it.

What INZ says is:

“It is recommended that you provide a list of only the transactions that have occurred during the previous 3 months. You may want to provide a longer list of transactions, such as a 6-month list, to strengthen your financial evidence.”

That’s all that appears on the information sheet. It doesn’t say a thing about six-month-old funds needing to be provided. It doesn’t even give an actual time limit as a part of the requirements. While the policy stops short of the six-month-old rule, the policy letter indicates it’s a good idea to provide a long bank history as evidence.

What Matters More Than Time?

The source. INZ wants to know from where your money originated. It doesn’t matter if that money was saved from salary or the profits of some company. It doesn’t matter if that money originates in a bank account held by your father or held by your mother. What matters is whether the source is genuine or the funds in question are genuinely available to you for your studies.

The language used by immigration instructions is very clear: officers must be satisfied that the funds’ source must be genuine, and they need to consider how long they have held the funds. This means that the period is entirely optional. The source and genuine availability of the funds
are not.

If your funds are absolutely crystal clear ‘in origin,’ it doesn’t matter if your funds have been held for two weeks or two years.

What Does ‘Genuine’ Even Mean?

This can sometimes be much harder than the previous point. Unfortunately, there’s no simple answer for what a ‘genuine source’ is. Every possible case is at least somewhat unique. Because INZ wants to stop people from pretending to have a genuine source for their verified funds, they don’t put out any list of ‘genuine sources.’

When deciding if a source is real or not there are internal instructions that immigration advisers follow. This is the difference that happens while working with a professional. An experienced, licensed adviser knows how to interpret genuine when assisting. When you ask an adviser for advice, you’re not only getting access to their understanding and expertise, but you’re also getting access to secret internal instructions specifically designed to figure out if made-up sources are legit.

What If My Funds Are Less Than Six Months Old?

No problem—as long as you can show the funds are absolutely clear ‘in source.’

You probably need to submit pay slips from your employers, transaction records, or anything similar showing how the money came into your bank account. If you can conclusively prove the source is crystal clear, the officer will probably not ask you for a minute amount of time concerning the period left on your funds. Really? Yes! It could vary and differ based on the officer. Officers may ask for supporting details even if the primary requirements are met : you will be delayed if you can’t explain anything a determined officer asks you.

Even if your funds have been held for six months, the officer could still want confirmation of where that money came from. Again, six months is not a magic number, and the availability of the funds only starts to matter after the source is considered genuine. Six months is not shielded from scrutiny.

How Can We Help?

At Immigration Visa Network, we don’t ask ‘Are your funds six months old?’ We ask simply ‘How can we help?’

Some of the things our advisers can do:

• Look at your situation on an individual basis and decide what’s right for you.
• Take some time to get a feel for the actual type, currency, and source of your funds.
• Recommend what extra proof you might need to show your source is clear ‘in availability’.
• Put together a simple, and remarkably strong, portfolio for your funds.

We don’t just ask “Are your funds six months old?” We make sure everything is 100% requested: and up to standard, not just by policy, but also in practice. That’s why our success rates are remarkably high!

We’ve helped many students with their New Zealand visas. In many cases, the students had funds that were certainly not six months old, but those funds nevertheless ended up being 100% available for their studies throughout that time. To us, what matters is strategy, knowledge, and
delivering results—not myths!

With that said, if you have plans to study in New Zealand, make certain whoever you’re working with actually knows how the system works!

Check out our website and get to us today. Let’s start your application down the right path from day one!