Global Vision Migration Lawyers provides expert legal advice across Australian visas, permanent residency, and citizenship. Our Immigration Lawyers assist individuals, families, and businesses with skilled migration, employer-sponsored visas, partner visas, and the strategic resolution of visa refusals and appeals nationwide.
Standard business sponsorship is the approval an Australian or overseas business needs before it can hire a skilled worker on a Subclass 482 Skills in Demand visa. It is granted to a legal entity, not to a job or a person, and it lasts for five years. Once you hold it, you can nominate as many roles as your business genuinely needs during that period.
In plain terms, a standard business sponsor, often shortened to SBS, is a business the Department of Home Affairs has approved to sponsor overseas workers. Approval says the business is real, lawful and suitable. It does not approve any particular job or any particular worker. Those come later.
Any business that wants to employ someone on a Subclass 482 visa needs standard business sponsorship, unless it has signed a labour agreement with the Commonwealth instead. A labour agreement is a negotiated deal that replaces the sponsorship step for employers with needs the standard programme does not cover. Businesses sponsoring under the Subclass 494 regional visa also need standard business sponsorship.
There are three separate applications, usually in this order.
| Step | Application | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sponsorship (Business) | Your business applies to be approved as a sponsor. This page covers that step. |
| 2 | Nomination (Employer) | You nominate a specific occupation for a specific person. Occupation lists, salary thresholds and labour market testing are assessed here. |
| 3 | Visa (Worker) | The worker applies for the visa and is assessed on skills, English, health and character. |
The three can overlap in practice, and many employers lodge sponsorship and nomination together to save time. Our team can map the sequence to your recruitment timetable at your consultation.
To approve your application, a delegate must be satisfied of each of the following.
Businesses operating only outside Australia face an extra test. They must show the worker will help establish an Australian arm of the business, or help meet a contract the business has. See our page on overseas business sponsorship.
There is no fixed list. A delegate needs enough to be satisfied that the business is real and trading, so we usually assemble a package from your financial statements, tax returns, recent business activity statements, business bank statements, employment records, service contracts and premises leases. New businesses are not shut out. A start-up trading for less than twelve months can be approved if the evidence shows genuine activity, and a detailed business plan, contracts and evidence of equipment or staff carry more weight in those cases.
Getting the applicant wrong is one of the most common and most costly errors, because it usually cannot be fixed after lodgement. A few rules matter.
Accreditation is optional recognition for lower-risk sponsors. Accredited sponsors get priority processing of nominations and visas, plus streamlined assessment of some nomination requirements. You apply for it as part of your sponsorship or renewal application, and you qualify through one of several categories covering government agencies, Australian Trusted Traders, established sponsors with strong Australian workforce percentages, major investors, and venture-backed STEM start-ups. Being refused accreditation does not affect your sponsorship, which is still approved for its full term. Read more on accredited sponsorship.
Australian sponsors already approved can renew using the shorter renewal process. Update your business details in ImmiAccount first, because the renewal application asks you to confirm you have done so. Lodge before your current approval ends. If it lapses first, you start again with a full application, and any nominations still waiting on a decision can be put at risk.
An Australian business refused sponsorship can ask the Administrative Review Tribunal to review the decision. Businesses operating only overseas do not have that right. A refusal of accreditation is not reviewable either. Review has tight deadlines, so if you have received a refusal, contact us quickly.
We help employers with entity selection, evidence, sponsorship, nomination and visa applications. Speak with our immigration lawyers in Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, Perth or the Gold Coast.
Five years from the day approval is granted. If you already hold a sponsorship, a new approval generally starts when the earlier one ends rather than overlapping it.
Yes. A business trading for less than twelve months can be approved if it shows genuine operation. Expect to provide more supporting material than an established business would.
No. One sponsorship covers the entity for its full term. You lodge a separate nomination for each role and each worker.
No. Sponsorship, nomination and recruitment costs must be borne by the business. Recovering them from the worker can lead to sanctions, including barring and cancellation.
The trustee, using the trustee's own legal name and its own registration details, with the relevant pages of the trust deed provided. The trust's own details are recorded separately in the form.
No. Sponsorship, nomination and the visa are decided separately against different criteria, and each is assessed on its own merits.
No, you can lodge it yourself. Employers usually bring in help where the business structure is complicated, where there is adverse history, where a previous application was refused, or where a start date is fixed and the sequencing has to be right the first time.