What is an “Accredited Sponsor”?

Skilled Worker Migration January 09, 2025

Becoming an Accredited Sponsor provides businesses with priority processing for all visa nomination applications, significantly reducing wait times—often to just five days.

The Standard Business Sponsorship (SBS) is valid for 5 years from the date the Department approves the applicant, and the employer can sponsor as many skilled workers as required. After this period, the SBS must be renewed.

An accredited sponsor receives priority in the immigration processing of nominations and visa applications for the Skills in Demand (SID) visa (subclass 482) and the Skilled Employer Sponsored Regional (Provisional) visa (subclass 494) (SESR).

What is a Qualified Sponsor?

To be able to apply for the Accredited Sponsor, the business needs to be considered a standard business sponsor. Which means:

Have a legally established and currently operating business.
Have no adverse information about your business; If the immigration department that owns the business or anyone associated with it has any adverse information, it should be reasonable to disregard it.
Have a strong track record or demonstrated commitment to hiring local workers.
Must state that the business owner is not and will not engage in discriminatory recruitment practices.

Eligibility Categories for Sponsor Accreditation

Businesses must fall into one of the following categories to qualify:

Category 1: Commonwealth, state and territory government agencies.
Category 2: Australian Trusted Traders
Category 3: Low volume, high percentage use of Australian workers (at least 85%). Australian workers make up at least 85% of your workforce in Australia
Category 4: High volume, medium percentage use of Australian workers (at least 75%). Australian workers make up at least 75% of your workforce in Australia
Category 5: Major investment in Australia. You have made a major investment in Australia (of at least AUD50M) that has directly generated Australian jobs.
Category 6: STEM Business start-up receiving venture capital funding. You are a business start-up operating in a science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM)-based field.

The business applicant will also need sponsor reference letters with company letterhead, the sponsor's name the full name of the person signing the reference and the visa applicant's full name and date of birth.

Advantages of Being an Accredited Sponsor

Sponsorship valid for 5 years.
Priority allocation and processing of all SID (Skills in Demand Visa - Subclass 492) applications and Skilled Employer Sponsored Regional (Provisional) visa (Subclass 494), with a waiting time of up to five days in the majority of the cases.
Additional simplified processing of certain low-risk nominations.
Concessions for nomination documentation.
Concessions for advertising related to labour market testing.
Concessions for character requirements.
High opportunity to bring skilled international workers to your business.