This page covers who qualifies, what your endorsing body is actually testing and how each part of that test gets failed, the three-year settlement clock and where the 2026 reforms leave it, and exactly how a lender turns a set of company accounts into a borrowing figure.
Understanding the Innovator Founder visa
What the route is, the four-part test an endorsing body applies before the Home Office sees anything, why the £200,000 figure no longer applies, and the three-year route to settlement the 2026 reforms leave alone.
What is the Innovator Founder visa?
The Innovator Founder visa is for people setting up and running a business in the UK that is new to the market, viable, and capable of growing. It opened on 13 April 2023 and replaced two routes at once — the old Innovator visa and the Start-up visa, both now closed to new applicants. What it kept from them is the endorsement model. What it added is that endorsement does not end when the visa is granted. An approved body assesses your business before you apply and stays involved throughout your permission, which is the structural difference between this route and every other one on this site: the thing standing behind your status is a business plan somebody else has agreed to keep vouching for.
Who is eligible?
- An endorsement from an approved endorsing body, confirming your business idea is new, innovative, viable and scalable
- A genuine, active, hands-on role in the day-to-day running of the business — this route is built around founder involvement, not passive investment
- No fixed investment threshold. Unlike the old Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) route and its £200,000, what gets assessed is the strength and credibility of the business plan itself
- English at CEFR level B2, the level this route asks for
- The maintenance funds requirement — £1,270 held for 28 consecutive days, unless you have already been in the UK with permission for 12 months or more
How does endorsement work?
Before the Home Office sees anything, an approved endorsing body has to agree that your business meets the Immigration Rules’ innovation, viability and scalability criteria. That order is deliberate: the assessment that decides most of these applications happens outside the Home Office, made by people who read business plans for a living, and it is designed to filter out speculative proposals before they reach a caseworker at all.
- New
- The business is not already trading in the UK. You are founding it, or co-founding it, rather than joining something that already exists here.Fails ifYou are buying into, or taking over, a business already operating in the UK.
- Innovative
- An original idea that meets a market need in a way nothing else does. Your endorsing body has to be able to say plainly what is different about it.Fails ifThe plan is a well-run version of a business that already exists. Competence is not innovation.
- Viable
- Realistic and achievable on the resources you actually have, with the skills, knowledge and market awareness to run it.Fails ifThe projections depend on funding, staff or customers you cannot evidence — or the plan needs a skill nobody on the founding team has.
- Scalable
- Structured to grow beyond its first customers, with evidence of potential for job creation and a wider market.Fails ifThe business tops out at the founder’s own capacity. Consultancy billed against your own hours is the usual example.
The four approved endorsing bodies
- UK Endorsing Services
- Envestors Limited
- Innovator International
- Global Entrepreneurs Programme
You approach one of them yourself, and pay their assessment fee, before any application reaches the Home Office. Each publishes its own criteria, fee and timetable, so the body you go to shapes how long this first stage takes.
Endorsement is not a certificate you file away afterwards. You are expected to stay in contact with your body throughout your permission, with scheduled check-in points — commonly set at 12 and 24 months — where you show what has actually happened since the last one. Drift far enough from the plan that was endorsed, or miss the contact points entirely, and the endorsement your permission rests on stops being secure.
Your permission rests on an endorsement that can be withdrawn
This is the closest thing the route has to a sponsor. An endorsing body that concludes you are no longer meeting the criteria can withdraw its endorsement, and permission resting on it can be curtailed — which is why the check-in points matter more than they look. For a mortgage this cuts both ways. An endorsement in good standing means a third party has examined your business, agreed it was viable, and kept checking on it since. That is more external verification than almost any other self-employed applicant can put in front of a lender.
Do you need £200,000 to invest?
This is the question the route gets asked most, and the answer is that the figure belongs to a different route — one that closed to new applicants in 2019. It survives in circulation because it was the headline number of UK business immigration for a decade.
- CurrentInnovator Founder · since 13 April 2023
Noneinvestment funds required
There is no sum you have to hold, or place into the business, to qualify. Your endorsing body assesses the business plan itself, and what that plan needs is judged against the plan rather than against a number in the Rules. You still have to show you can support yourself, and a plan that needs capital still has to explain where the capital is coming from.
- ClosedTier 1 (Entrepreneur) · closed 29 March 2019
£200,000investment funds requiredThe old route required £200,000 — £50,000 in limited cases — to be held and then invested in the business. It closed to new applicants on 29 March 2019, and its headline figure is the most persistent piece of out-of-date advice about starting a business in the UK.
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How long does it last, and what’s the route to settlement?
Permission is normally granted for three years, and can be extended for further three-year periods. What makes the route unusual is what sits at the end of the first three: settlement, rather than a renewal you hope to keep repeating.
- Yr 0–3
Three years of endorsed permission
One grant, three years, with your endorsing body in the picture throughout. The business has to keep trading and you have to keep running it — those are conditions of the permission, not just of the settlement application at the end of it.
- Yr 3–4
The waiting year before citizenship
Indefinite Leave to Remain is settled status with no time limit and no endorsing body attached. British citizenship opens twelve months after that — the point at which the business and the visa finally stop being the same conversation.
Key dates
- Yr 1First contact point with your endorsing body — commonly set at 12 months
- Yr 2Second contact point — commonly set at 24 months
- Yr 3Settlement endorsement, then Indefinite Leave to Remain — or extend for another three years
- Yr 4Eligible to apply for British citizenship
What Indefinite Leave to Remain asks of you at the end of those three years:
- Your business is still active, trading and sustainable
- You have continued to be actively involved in running it
- Your endorsing body gives you a settlement endorsement confirming the business meets the relevant criteria
- The general settlement conditions are met too — no more than 180 days outside the UK in any rolling 12-month period, and the Life in the UK test if you are aged 18 to 64
What the 2026 settlement reforms leave alone
The government’s earned settlement proposals — announced on 20 November 2025 and consulted on until 12 February 2026 — would raise the standard qualifying period towards ten years for many sponsored work routes. As they stand, the Innovator Founder route keeps its accelerated three-year path, and that gap is now the largest single advantage it holds over a sponsored one. Nothing has changed in the Immigration Rules yet, and this page states the position as it is rather than as it might become. If a settlement date is part of your reason for buying, check gov.uk before you plan around it.
Can I bring my family, and what work can I do?
Dependants can come with you or join you later — a partner, and children under 18 — and their permission runs alongside yours. They can work in almost any role while they are here. The one exception is professional sport: a dependant cannot work as a professional sportsperson or sports coach.
Working outside your own business
This route is more flexible than a sponsored one. Depending on your circumstances, you may be able to take employment outside your endorsed business as well as running it — but it is a conditional permission rather than a general right, and the conditions attached to your own grant are what decide it. Check them against the current Immigration Rules, or with your endorsing body, before you count a second income in a mortgage application. Where it is allowed, that outside salary is assessed like anyone else’s, and a PAYE payslip is the easiest income a lender will ever read from you.
Getting a mortgage on an Innovator Founder visa
Why a founder is assessed as self-employed rather than salaried, which lines of your income a lender actually counts, how much difference a second year of accounts makes, and what to have ready.
Can I get a mortgage on an Innovator Founder visa?
Yes — though your application is assessed as self-employed or director income rather than as salaried income, and that changes who you should be talking to rather than whether you can borrow at all. A lender wants to understand three things: what the business has actually traded, what you personally take out of it, and how secure the permission behind you is. Two of those are questions a standard employed application never has to ask, which is why founders get more inconsistent answers from high-street branches than almost anyone else on these pages.
What matters most to lenders on this route
- Your business’s trading history and financial performance — how long it has traded, and what the filed accounts show
- What you personally draw from the business, salary plus dividends, rather than what the company turned over
- Your endorsement status, and the credibility of the business plan behind it
- Whether the business’s ongoing viability is properly evidenced — accounts, an accountant’s certificate, and a business account that tells the same story
- How much permission you have left. Most lenders like to see around twelve months on the clock, and an extension here depends on your endorsing body rather than on an employer
What a lender counts as your income
This is where founder applications are won and lost, and it is almost always a misunderstanding rather than a shortfall. Turnover is the number a founder knows. Drawings are the number a lender uses. A business turning over comfortably can support a smaller mortgage than a salaried job paying a fraction of it — not because anything is being held against you, but because an affordability calculation reads one figure and not the other.
Counted toward affordability
Salary drawn through PAYE
The cleanest line you have. It shows on payslips, in the accounts and on your SA302 alike, and every lender on the market reads it the same way.
Dividends paid to you
Added to salary to give your total drawings, and usually averaged across the last two years rather than taken at the latest figure.
Net profit retained in the companySome lenders
A minority will read your share of net profit as income where you are a director with a material shareholding and your accountant can evidence it.
Employed income from outside the businessIf permitted
Where the conditions on your permission allow additional work, a payslip from it is assessed exactly like anyone else’s.
Not counted
Company turnover
The top line is not your income, and no affordability calculation on any panel is built from it — however large it is.
Work invoiced but not yet paid
A full order book is not income until it clears. Lenders assess what has landed, not what is owed to you.
Director’s loan repayments to you
Repaying money you lent the company returns your own capital. It is not earnings, and it is not treated as any.
Investment or grant funding raised
Capital raised belongs to the business and is committed to the plan your endorsement rests on. It does not enter an affordability sum.
Most lenders average your drawings across the last two years, and take the lower figure where the latest year has fallen. That is why restructuring how you pay yourself shortly before applying rarely helps — it takes a filed year to show up anywhere a lender can see it.
How much can I borrow?
Standard multiples of 4–4.5× apply, and they are applied to your drawings — salary plus dividends, averaged across the years a lender can see. Lenders typically want one to three years of company accounts, or an accountant’s certificate. How much you can borrow therefore turns less on how the business is performing than on how you have chosen to pay yourself out of it. Use our eligibility calculator for an estimate against your own drawings and deposit.
The variable that moves most on this route is how many years of accounts sit behind you. These are the same founder, two years apart.
One full year of accounts
A business under two years old, one set of filed accounts, and an accountant who can speak to them. A narrower market, not a closed one.
- What a lender can see
- A single year of filed accounts or an SA302, the business account behind it, and however many months of personal drawings have actually landed.
- Which lenders are open to you
- A minority of the mainstream market plus most specialist self-employed lenders. A broker-only pool, in practice — these criteria are rarely on a comparison site.
- What usually decides it
- The accountant’s certificate and the size of your deposit. A projection for the current year carries real weight with some underwriters and none at all with others.
- What to do now
- Get the first year filed rather than estimated, and keep the business account cleanly separate from your personal one. Mixed accounts are the most common reason a one-year case stalls.
Two to three years
Two or three sets of filed accounts, a drawings pattern with a shape to it, and a business your endorsing body has now checked more than once.
- What a lender can see
- Several years of accounts, an income they can average, and evidence the business survived its first years rather than projections that it will.
- Which lenders are open to you
- Most of the market, mainstream lenders included. Self-employment becomes a documentation question rather than a criteria one.
- What usually decides it
- Ordinary affordability — averaged drawings against outgoings and existing debt, at the same multiples an employed applicant gets.
- What to do now
- Check how the years average out before you apply. A strong latest year sitting behind a weaker first one is usually averaged down, which surprises founders more than any other rule on this page.
Documents you’ll need
- Passport, and your Innovator Founder permission — a biometric residence permit or an eVisa share code
- Your endorsing body confirmation letter
- Company accounts or SA302s, or an accountant’s certificate — typically covering one to three years
- Business bank statements alongside your personal ones, usually three to six months of each
- Proof of deposit, with a documented trail for anything that came from abroad or out of the business
- Evidence that the business is still trading and viable — recent invoices, contracts, or current management accounts
- Your UK credit report — check yours with checkmyfile(opens in a new tab)
Common challenges — and how we solve them
“My business is less than two years old.”
Not a decline, and not unusual on this route. The visa itself is granted three years at a time, so a lender insisting on three years of accounts would rule out most of the people holding it. Several lenders on our panel will work from one full year of filed accounts, particularly with a strong accountant’s reference and clear personal income evidence behind it. What makes a one-year case work is documentation rather than size: filed accounts rather than estimates, a business account kept properly separate from your personal one, and drawings that appear exactly where the accounts say they should.
“My income is mostly profit left in the company, not salary.”
Then the lender you approach matters far more than the rate they advertise. Most read salary plus dividends and stop there, which for a founder reinvesting deliberately can understate income badly. A minority will assess your share of net profit instead, where you are a director with a material shareholding and your accountant can evidence it. That single distinction is the biggest swing in what you can borrow on this route, and it is not something a comparison site can show you — it lives in individual lenders’ criteria.
“I’m not sure my endorsement status matters to a lender.”
It matters more than most founders expect, once it is put in front of them properly. An endorsement means an approved body examined your business plan, agreed it was viable and scalable, and has kept checking on it since — external verification of precisely the thing an underwriter is trying to assess and cannot easily judge alone. Handed over as a letter with no context it means nothing to someone who has never seen one. Presented alongside the accounts as evidence of a monitored business, it does real work.
“My accountant says I should pay myself more before I apply.”
Right idea, wrong timing — and worth knowing before you restructure anything. Lenders read filed accounts, and most average the last two years, so a salary increase taken three months before an application usually shows up nowhere at all. Where it does work is as planning: if a purchase is eighteen months to two years out, how you pay yourself between now and then is genuinely worth a conversation with your accountant and a broker in the same room. Changing it the month before you apply mostly costs you tax without moving the affordability figure.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need £200,000 to invest for the Innovator Founder visa?
No. Unlike the old Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) route, the Innovator Founder visa has no fixed investment threshold. What is assessed is your endorsing body’s judgement of whether the business is new, innovative, viable and scalable. The £200,000 figure belongs to a route that closed to new applicants in March 2019.
How long until I can apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain on an Innovator Founder visa?
Typically after three years, provided your business remains active, trading and sustainable, you have continued to be actively involved in running it, and your endorsing body gives you a settlement endorsement. As the 2026 earned settlement proposals stand, this three-year pathway is not among the routes being extended — though nothing has changed in the Immigration Rules yet, so check gov.uk before planning around a date.
Can self-employed Innovator Founder visa holders get a mortgage?
Yes. You will typically need one to three years of company accounts or an accountant’s certificate, and lenders base affordability on your personal drawings from the business — salary plus dividends — rather than on total company turnover.
Do I need to keep in touch with my endorsing body after getting the visa?
Yes. Innovator Founder visa holders are expected to maintain contact with their endorsing body throughout their permission, including scheduled check-in points commonly set at 12 and 24 months, and further endorsement is needed for both extension and settlement applications.
Can I work outside my own business on this visa?
In some circumstances, yes, subject to the conditions attached to your permission — this route is more flexible than most sponsored ones. Always confirm your own position against the current Immigration Rules before relying on outside employment, including in a mortgage application.
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Further reading
