What Can a SIRV Agent Actually Do for You — and What Can Nobody Do?

What you are actually buying: sequence, document form, and legwork

Compressed into one sentence: an agent can cut your trial-and-error cost, but cannot change the outcome of a review. Broken down, only three things are genuinely worth paying for on this route.

The first is sequence. A SIRV is split across two agencies — the Board of Investments performs the substantive review and issues an endorsement letter, and the Makati Immigration Extension Office receives the case and implements the visa. The order is fixed. Someone who has run this line before can tell you what must precede what, which step is waiting on whom, and how to align the movement of money with the movement of paper. The cost of discovering that sequence yourself is usually not the service fee; it is lost months and capital already committed. For where each leg happens and what each one wants, see where to file a SIRV and what documents each leg needs.

The second is document form. The same underlying facts can be presented in a way that passes or a way that gets returned. The remittance trail — where the funds originated, which bank carried them, which vehicle received them — has to hold together as a coherent chain. Documents issued abroad have established treatment for authentication and translation. An experienced hand can tell you, before you start walking, that a particular document will bounce in its current form. This is emphatically not the same as making an unqualifying investment look qualifying. That is a different thing, and it is the most dangerous service on this route.

The third is legwork and presence. Queuing, paying, submitting, collecting — a real share of this process is physical labour that can be outsourced. But note the boundary: the Citizen's Charter assigns steps 6 and 7 to the BOI liaison, and those two are outside the outsourceable range. The next section deals with that.

Everything else — whether your investment falls within scope, whether capital genuinely arrived from abroad, whether you carry a derogatory record — is not purchasable. Those are facts each agency verifies independently, and nobody can swap a fact out for you. For the general criteria that apply to choosing any agent, see how to choose a Philippine visa agent.

Two stretches nobody can substitute for: the BOI review, and steps 6 and 7

Two stretches of this process are structurally closed: the BOI's substantive review, and the steps the Charter assigns to the BOI liaison. It makes no difference who you hire, because neither is a question of who walks to the counter.

Start with the BOI leg. The Bureau of Immigration's 2026 Citizen's Charter attaches a note to the SIRV entry: Application must be endorsed by the Board of Investments. Immigration accepts the BOI's determination and does not re-litigate whether the investment qualifies. The BOI, in turn, is testing two hard facts: whether capital was remitted inward from abroad, and whether it went into a viable economic activity under Book V of the Omnibus Investments Code (Executive Order No. 226, as amended). The Charter confirms that both a capital floor and a qualifying scope exist; the current figure and the current list are whatever the BOI publishes at the time.

Both of those are verifiable objective facts. A remittance trail either exists or it does not. An activity is either within scope or outside it. So if anyone hints they can get the BOI to nod at an investment that does not qualify, the correct response is not to negotiate the price — it is to end the conversation. For what qualifies and what holding the visa obliges you to do, see investor immigration conditions and qualifying investments.

Now steps 6 and 7. The Charter attaches the same parenthetical to both: (to be done by the BOI liaison). Claiming the approved order, and transmitting the applicant's passport together with that order, are assigned to the Board of Investments' liaison personnel. This is not about queue position; it specifies which agency's staff move the file through that channel. Two practical consequences: first, a claim that "our people collect the order directly" does not match the Charter, and is worth probing on the spot; second, your passport leaves your possession during this stretch, so when it goes, when it returns, and what record of handover exists should be written into your arrangement beforehand, not chased afterwards.

The same applies to waiting time, which is also not for sale. The Charter allots 4 working days for the order to travel to and from the Deputy Commissioner's office in step five, gives the whole immigration leg a total processing time of 4 working days, 4 hours and 34 minutes, and steps 6 and 7 run on the BOI's own schedule. No rush fee compresses those. For the full timeline, see how long a SIRV takes and where the money goes.

Four checks you can run yourself, before anyone quotes you a number

Stop asking which firm is reputable — that question has no reliable answer. Run these four checks instead, and you can judge for yourself. All four can be completed before you ever meet anyone. The order matters: establish that you are dealing with a real, accountable company first, and look at price last.

1. Company registration that is publicly searchable. Ask for the exact legal name that will appear on the contract, then check whether that name is registered and in good standing through official channels. If it cannot be found, skip the remaining three steps. Check the entity you would be contracting with — not the name on the signage, not a chat handle, not an individual's name.
2. A physical office you can walk into. Not a photo of a shared-desk door plate, not an address that exists only in a messaging app. This route involves proof of funds and passport handovers; if things go wrong, you need somewhere to go. Make an appointment and see whether work is actually being done there.
3. Official invoices or receipts in the company's name. Every payment you make should return a formal document bearing the company name. "Transfer to a personal account first and we will sort out the paperwork later" leaves you holding nothing you can act on.
4. The contracting entity and the receiving account must share the same name, and it must be a corporate account. This is the check people skip and the one that hurts most. If Company A signs and an individual's account collects, who exactly do you have a claim against? Three names — contracting entity, receiving account, invoice header — must match.

Beyond those four, one more is worth running: the BI Accreditation number. The Bureau of Immigration accredits certain firms, and an accreditation number can be verified. Understand its limits — it establishes that a firm is on record with Immigration; it does not mean that firm influences outcomes, and it is not a pass of any kind. A concrete, checkable example: Yixing's SEC registration is CS202009551 and its accreditation is BI Accreditation No. CA-202624381-1, valid to 30 June 2027, alongside DOLE and PRA accreditation. Numbers are published so you can verify them; a firm that cannot produce verifiable ones invites a follow-up question.

Compare prices only after all four checks pass. Doing it the other way round is how people end up choosing on price alone. For reading a quote, see how Philippine agency fees break down; for whether your matter needs a lawyer instead, see lawyer or agent: which one handles what.

Five buckets a SIRV quote must separate, and why

An honest SIRV quote separates at least five buckets, because their nature, destination and refundability are completely different. This section describes structure only — the amounts should never come from an article anyway; they should come from an itemised quote.

1. Investment principal. The most frequently confused bucket: this is not a service fee and not anyone's revenue. It is your own money, remitted from abroad and placed into a qualifying economic activity. It goes into your investment vehicle, not into an agent's pocket. If anyone quotes principal and service together as one number, ask for them to be separated — this is not haggling, it is a property boundary you have to be able to see.
2. BOI-side costs. The official charges and supporting expenses attached to the endorsement leg. They belong to the BOI line, not to Immigration.
3. Immigration-side official fees, collected in stages. The Charter's fee schedule is organised by status tier, and the tier names tell the story by themselves: Probationary Adult, Probationary Minor, Extension of Probationary SIRV, and Probationary to Indefinite. That means payments fall due at different stages rather than as a single settlement. Which tier applies, and which stage you are paying for this time, should be stated on the quote.
4. Third-party costs. Authentication, translation, notarisation, audit, bank charges — these are paid to third parties, not to the agent. They are the ones most likely to surface one at a time afterwards, so settle before signing which are included, which are billed as incurred, and who advances them.
5. Service fee. Only what remains is the agent's actual revenue, buying the three things from the first section: sequence, document form, and legwork. It should be a standalone, stated figure — not a residual.

Put the five side by side and one conclusion follows: any quote that folds them into a single number removes your ability to check anything. You cannot tell whether an official fee rose or a service fee did, cannot tell whether a third-party cost was counted twice, and cannot compute what should be returned if the engagement ends midway. For the general method of reading a quote, see separating government fees from service fees; for the SIRV timeline and cost picture, see how long a SIRV takes and where the money goes.

Why nobody can quote a total up front: three variables live on your side

If someone produces a total before looking at your situation, that number is a guess. Not because the industry is opaque, but because the three variables that determine the total all belong to you.

Variable one: the investment plan itself. Which sector the capital goes into, what vehicle holds it, how many tranches the remittance arrives in, whether the vehicle is newly formed or already exists — every combination implies different preparation, different third-party costs, and a different volume of engagement on the BOI leg. Until the plan is settled, cost has no floor.

Variable two: your current status and record. Whether you are inside or outside the country, what visa you currently hold, how much authorised stay remains, whether there is any history of overstay or refusal — these determine whether other matters must be resolved first, and whether the two derogatory record checks are a formality or a real risk. Two applicants for the same visa can differ in actual workload by a factor of two.

Variable three: which stage you are contracting for. The immigration-side fee schedule is already staged: Probationary Adult, Probationary Minor, Extension of Probationary SIRV and Probationary to Indefinite are four distinct tiers reflecting different phases of status. How far you intend to go in this engagement is itself a question to settle first. Bundling "obtain probationary status" and "convert to indefinite" into one price sells you years of uncertainty as a package.

So a professional answer looks like this: review the plan and your current status first, then present the structure item by item, and only then the numbers; official fees passed through at whatever the authorities currently publish, with receipts, and the service fee stated separately. Conversely, when you hear a flat all-in price "covering everything through to indefinite status", the question to ask is not whether it is high or low, but which uncertainties it is hiding.

One more thing said plainly: a price that is implausibly low is usually not generosity. Work involving proof of funds, cross-agency sequencing and passport custody carries real labour cost. When a quote sits far below everyone else, the money tends to come back some other way — items added midway, extra charges when documents are returned, or simply silence after the first payment lands. If that happens, see what to do when an agent disappears.

Five signals to stop on, and what to do once money has already moved

Hit any one of these five and stop before paying anything further. None of them is intuition; each maps onto a structural fact described above.

1. They talk about outcomes rather than documents. Phrases like guaranteed approval, or claims of inside channels, are a red flag every time: the BOI is testing two objective facts — whether capital was remitted inward and whether the activity qualifies — and no one can alter either. Immigration relies on the endorsement. Anyone steering your attention from facts to relationships is telling you something.
2. They will not itemise, only give a total. Investment principal, BOI-side costs, staged immigration fees, third-party costs and the service fee are five different kinds of money. Refusal to separate them usually means one of the five would not survive inspection.
3. They ask you to pay a personal account. When the contracting entity, the receiving account and the invoice header do not match, you have no one to bring a claim against. There is no exception to this, and "the corporate account is under review" is not a reason.
4. Their description of steps 6 and 7 does not match the Charter. The Charter assigns both to the BOI liaison. If someone says their own staff collect the order directly, ask them to name the specific action. An unclear answer means either they have not done this before, or they are being evasive.
5. They push you to move capital first and sort documents later. This is the expensive one. The substantive review sits on the BOI leg; once funds land in a non-qualifying activity, the rest of the process has nothing to attach to — and the money has already gone. The correct order is always scope first, capital second.

If payment has already gone out and the other side has stopped responding, the first move is to preserve evidence, not to keep chasing. Assemble the contract, transfer records, invoices and receipts, message history, the counterparty's full legal name and registration details, and the names of the individuals you dealt with, into one complete timeline — the earlier and more complete, the better. For the routes available afterwards and what each requires, see recovering money after an agent goes wrong. Where amounts are substantial or a dispute has formed, consult a licensed attorney; this article is not legal advice.

Instead of asking which firm is best, ask someone to break your specific case into its five cost buckets and two agency legs, in front of you. A clear breakdown is itself evidence of experience. Ask for an itemised breakdown →

Back to where this started: on the SIRV route, an agent's value lies in getting the sequence right, shaping documents into a form that passes, and absorbing the legwork. Its limit lies at the BOI's substantive review and at the two steps the Charter hands to the BOI liaison. See that boundary clearly and you will neither pay for what cannot be bought nor underestimate where help is worth having. If you want the plan and the filing sequence lined up in one pass, start with visa and workforce services. Yixing is a private consultancy with no affiliation to any government agency and makes no representation on behalf of any authority.