Endorsing bodies
Only a body approved by the Home Office can endorse a business for the Innovator Founder route, and as at the list published on 7 August 2026 three of them are open to new applicants. They apply the same three criteria from the Immigration Rules and they do not assess them the same way. This page sets out who can endorse, what it costs, how the assessments actually differ, and what refusals turn on.
UK Endorsing Services, Innovator International and Envestors, plus one government programme that endorses only founders it has already invited.
Paid to the endorsing body, not to the Home Office, and separate from the visa fee and the immigration health surcharge.
You meet your endorsing body at least twice during your permission, and pay for each meeting.
The approved list is not stable. Four organisations came off it between February and August 2026.
Who can endorse
Approved bodies are listed by the Home Office and only a listed body can endorse. If anyone else offers you an endorsement, that is something to report rather than accept.
A ten stage process run through a portal: registration, background survey, due diligence checks, document upload and a business idea questionnaire, then the assessment fee, due diligence and document review, and a business plan assessment. It supplies its own business plan template and expects a CV, three year profit and loss, balance sheet and cashflow forecasts, and identity evidence. Assessment is point scored across the three criteria, with a second assessor validating a successful review before interview. Declined applicants receive feedback and can reapply for a further fee.
Scores each of innovation, viability and scalability on a six point scale. Four is the minimum for endorsement on each criterion. Three or below is a refusal. A score of two is treated as showing some promise while remaining a considerable distance below the requirement, and a two is rarely overturned on second assessment or appeal. The practical consequence is that a weak case is not a near miss, and reworking the presentation of a two does not produce a four.
An investment network as well as an endorsing body, and it assesses in two parts. One part is the visa test. The other is an investor readiness assessment of the business plan itself, and it carries the overall mark. This is the difference that catches people out, and it is set out in full below.
A Department for Business and Trade scheme for internationally mobile, technology based entrepreneurs. It endorses only founders already invited onto the programme, so it is not a body you can approach in the way the other three can. In practice, three organisations serve worldwide demand for this route.
Around sixty further organisations appear on the Home Office list as legacy Innovator endorsing bodies, including several universities and accelerators. They can endorse only people already endorsed under the old Innovator or Start-up routes before 13 April 2023. If you are making a first application, they are not available to you, whatever a search result suggests.
A moving list
Between February and August 2026 the Home Office removed Community and Business Partners on 17 February, Innovate Britain on 20 April, MedCity and the NatWest Entrepreneur Accelerator on 5 August, and SFC Capital on 7 August. Endorsing bodies are themselves subject to Home Office oversight and can be removed.
Two things follow. The first is practical: check the current list on GOV.UK before you approach anyone, because a great deal of published guidance on this route names bodies that can no longer endorse. The second is about the shape of the market. Fewer bodies serving the same worldwide demand, each collecting an assessment fee whether it endorses or refuses, means the operative bar sits above the literal wording of the Rules. For an assessor facing a marginal case, refusal is the safe decision.
The difference that matters
Every body applies innovative, viable and scalable, because those come from the Immigration Rules. What differs is the framework around them, and with Envestors the difference is large enough to change the outcome on an unchanged business.
Each criterion is scored on a six point scale with four as the threshold. The assessment is therefore concentrated on the statutory tests themselves: is the idea original enough that a competitor would struggle to reproduce it, is the plan achievable on the founder's resources and skills, and is there structured planning towards growth and job creation. A plan built to answer those three questions directly is a plan built for this framework.
Envestors assesses in two sections. One is the visa requirement, innovative, viable and scalable, with a minimum of 60 per cent on each. The other is an investor readiness assessment of the business plan across eight headings: quality of the business summary, prior traction achieved, strength of the UK market need, viability of the revenue model, awareness and quality of the UK market analysis, quality of the sales and growth strategy, viability of the marketing strategy, and credibility of the financial forecasts. The overall pass mark is 70 per cent.
Because the overall mark carries both sections, a business can clear every visa criterion Envestors tests and still be refused, on the quality of the plan rather than on the merits of the business. A document written only against the Immigration Rules will comfortably pass the part Envestors treats as a floor and score at half marks on the part it uses to decide. That is not a drafting flourish. It means a genuine UK market analysis with sourced data, a pricing and revenue model defended against competitors, a customer acquisition model with channel level assumptions, and a financial model with a stated methodology and a scenario range.
Where the same business returns for further endorsement, the assessment is about progress since the last one rather than fresh innovation. Filed accounts, invoices, sales and third party selection do the work that the innovation argument did first time round. Founders who assume the second assessment is a formality, or that it repeats the first, prepare for the wrong thing.
Refusals
Refusals cluster. In our experience they very rarely turn on the quality of the writing, and almost always on one of five things being absent from the file on the day it is assessed.
The innovation test is not really about novelty or usefulness. It is about whether a well resourced competitor could reproduce the thing within months. Combining existing tools into a better workflow, however well executed, is where most refusals begin.
The Rules require that the applicant generated the innovative ideas or made a significant contribution to them. Being the founder on a company filing, or the person who paid for the build, does not evidence that. Dated design notes, specifications, repository history and research do.
Either the founder can build the core capability, or there is a named technical co-founder, or there is a signed and funded development contract. An intention to hire once the visa is granted is the most common gap of all.
There is no fixed minimum investment in the Rules. There is a straightforward comparison between what the plan says will be built and what the money could actually pay for, and a mismatch reads as a viability failure rather than a funding one.
Interest, sign-ups, letters of support and pilot conversations are not validation. One customer who has paid the price in your financial model is worth more than a hundred who said they would.
Where the evidence for a section does not exist, a complete document invites you to write about your approach to it instead. Assessors recognise that pattern immediately, and it reads as coherent, internally consistent and unsupported. A gap left visible is more useful than a gap written over.
A low score is not a near miss. It is the assessor telling you the case is not there yet.
Chris Dias, co-founder
How we advise
We look at where the business is strongest before we look at who to send it to. A business whose case rests on genuinely defensible technology, with the founder's own authorship well documented, is arguing on the statutory criteria and belongs where those criteria are scored directly. A business whose strength is commercial, with traction, a defended revenue model and real market analysis behind it, can carry the investor readiness weighting that would sink a thinner file. Fit is not a matter of taste; it changes the score.
The harder conversation comes first. Some businesses are not ready for any endorsing body, and a few will never meet the innovation test as it is actually applied. Where that is the position, we say so before you spend, because a refused endorsement costs more than any legal fee and a low score is rarely recoverable on review. If the answer is a readiness programme rather than an application this quarter, that is the advice you will get.
Our Innovator Founder work is led by Chris Dias, a business immigration solicitor in his 25th year of practice. The route has its own dedicated home at innovator.lawyer, with the full fixed fee menu and a free 20 minute consultation.
Free AI pre-check: evaluate your concept against the innovation, viability and scalability criteria at ukinnovator.online, built by our sister venture Legalaid. Guidance only, not legal advice, and a strong result is not a promise of endorsement.
Advice
General information as at 29 August 2026, checked against the Home Office list published on 7 August 2026. Not advice on your case, and both the list and endorsing body practice change.
On the Home Office list as at 7 August 2026, three bodies are open to new applicants: UK Endorsing Services, Innovator International and Envestors. A fourth, the Global Entrepreneurs Programme, endorses only founders already invited onto its programme, so it is not open in the ordinary sense. Every other organisation on the list is a legacy body and can endorse only people already endorsed under the old Innovator or Start-up routes before 13 April 2023.
The Home Office sets the endorsement fee at £1,000, paid to the endorsing body rather than to the Home Office, and £500 for each contact point meeting. You will meet your endorsing body at least twice during your permission. Those are separate from the visa application fee, the immigration health surcharge and any legal fees.
No, and this is the single most expensive misunderstanding on this route. They apply the same three criteria from the Immigration Rules but score them within different frameworks and weight other things differently. A business plan built for one body's framework can score badly with another while the underlying business is unchanged.
Yes, among the three open to new applicants. The choice is worth real thought, because their processes, evidence expectations and emphases differ. The Global Entrepreneurs Programme cannot be chosen; it invites.
Nothing in the Rules stops you approaching a different body. Whether you should is another matter. A refusal usually means the case needs substantive work rather than a second reader, and the same submission put to a second body tends to produce the same result. Read the feedback properly first.
In our experience refusals cluster around a small number of things: whether the idea could be copied by a well resourced competitor, whether the founder's own authorship of the innovation is documented rather than asserted, whether there is real capacity to build what is described, whether the capital matches the plan, and whether anyone has yet paid for the product. Very few refusals turn on the quality of the writing.
The Home Office publishes the approved endorsing bodies and updates it without notice. Verify the current position on GOV.UK before you pay anyone anything, and check the endorsement and contact point fees on the Innovator Founder visa guidance.
Book a consultation with Chris Dias and we will tell you honestly where the case stands before you commit to a body or a timetable. No lawyer can guarantee endorsement, and you should be wary of anyone who says otherwise; what we promise is an honest assessment and a properly built case.
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