What documents do you need for SEIS and EIS advance assurance?

Before HMRC will consider your SEIS or EIS advance assurance application, it wants a clear picture of your company, your plan and the people putting money in. In practice that comes down to six documents, and the applications that sail through are the ones where every item is present and tells the same story.

The Document Checklist

Here is what to have ready before you open the application:

• A business plan
• Two to three years of financial forecasts
• Your latest accounts, if you have any
• Your articles of association
• Your pitch deck
• Details of at least one named prospective investor

Get these right and a clean application can clear in roughly four to six weeks. Get them wrong and you invite the follow-up questions that, more than anything else, stretch out how long advance assurance takes.

What HMRC Actually Wants to See

It is not about the volume of paper, it is about whether the case officer can see that your company qualifies and that investors' money is genuinely at risk. Taking each document in turn:

• Business plan. The heart of the application. It should explain what you do, the market you are going after, how you will spend the money you raise, and, crucially, that the investment carries real risk. A plan that reads like a sure thing invites questions, because the schemes exist to fund risk.
• Financial forecasts. Two to three years, realistic, and tied to the plan rather than pulled from thin air. They should show the raise going in and being spent on the activities the plan describes. Hockey-stick numbers with no basis are a red flag.
• Latest accounts. If you have been trading, include your most recent accounts. If you are brand new with nothing filed yet, say so plainly. That is fine for an early-stage company, but do not leave HMRC guessing.
• Articles of association. Your current articles, as filed at Companies House. HMRC checks that the shares being issued are ordinary shares with no preferential rights to dividends or assets that would breach the rules. If your articles carry unusual share rights, expect scrutiny.
• Pitch deck. The investor-facing version of your story. It does not replace the business plan, it sits alongside it, and the two need to agree. A deck that promises returns the plan and forecasts do not support is the kind of inconsistency that triggers a query.
• Named investor details. The name of at least one genuine prospective investor, and ideally how much they intend to put in. This is the one that catches people out, so it gets its own section below.

The Named-Investor Catch

This is the requirement that trips up more founders than any other. Many assume the sensible order is to get advance assurance first, then go and find investors with the assurance in hand. HMRC works the other way around: it will not accept an application without at least one named prospective investor on file. No name, no application, and the clock never even starts.

In practice this means having some of your fundraising conversations before, not after, the application. A single named investor who is seriously interested is usually enough to satisfy HMRC and let the rest of the round follow once the assurance is granted.

How a Weak Document Set Causes Delay

From the practitioner's chair, almost every avoidable delay traces back to the same thing: a document set that leaves questions unanswered. When the case officer cannot tell from your pack whether you qualify, they do not reject it, they come back and ask. Each round of questions adds a week or two, and a pack with several gaps can turn a four-week job into a ten-week one.

The usual weak spots:

• Forecasts that do not match the business plan, or that no one can explain.
• A plan that does not make clear how the money will be used or why it is at risk.
• Missing or out-of-date articles, or share rights that look preferential.
• A pitch deck that overpromises and contradicts the forecasts.
• No named investor, or one too vague to count.

None of these is hard to fix in advance, and that is the whole point. The application has to be right first time, because there is no right of appeal if it is refused. A complete, consistent pack is the single biggest thing within your control, and it is what separates the applications that clear quickly from the ones that drag.

This article is a general guide and not tax or financial advice. SEIS and EIS eligibility and the documents HMRC requires depend on your circumstances and can change, so always confirm the current position with a qualified accountant or HMRC before you apply.