A sponsoring employer approaches you. They will pay, they will instruct, they will chase you for updates, and they are the reason the work exists. The visa applicant is an employee you may never speak to directly.
Who is your client?
OMARA answers this in its own practice guide, Who is your client?, and it does not turn on any of those things. The Migration Act defines a client as a person to whom the agent has given, or has agreed to give — whether or not in writing — immigration assistance. Payment is irrelevant to the test. So is who signs the engagement email.
OMARA notes that it receives complaints and queries every year that would not have arisen had this question been considered carefully at the outset.
The employer-only service agreement does not comply
This is not an inference. It is stated directly in OMARA's second guidance document on the current Code.
The guidance works through the common global-mobility arrangement: the firm holds a service agreement with the sponsoring employer, the employer pays all fees and disbursements, and the visa applicant receives written confirmation of the services rather than an agreement of their own. It then reasons from the statutory definition — if you help prepare a visa application for a person, that person is your client, irrespective of who is paying — and concludes that the practice of having a service agreement with the sponsoring employer only, and not with the visa applicant as well, does not comply with the Code. Firms with such a practice, it says, should amend it.
Section 42 requires a service agreement in force before immigration assistance is given, in writing, signed by the client and by the agent, and containing each client's name, date of birth, email address if any, and residential address.
One agreement can cover both — on conditions
Section 42(4) permits a service agreement to be expressed to cover more than one client, so a single document can cover the sponsor and the applicant. The guidance confirms this, and confirms the conditions: the agreement must be signed by each client or by someone with authority to sign on their behalf, and it must satisfy section 42 in respect of each client covered.
A main agreement plus a supplementary one is workable, provided the combination meets the requirements for every client. What is not workable is treating the applicant as a beneficiary of someone else's contract.
The details are not negotiable
Practices ask whether the client-detail requirements can flex when an employer initiates work before applicant details exist. The guidance is blunt: there is no flexibility on the required details other than the email address. It also points out that, given section 36 requires you to verify each client's identity anyway, you should already hold their date of birth and address before entering an agreement with them.
Two accommodations are available, and both are worth knowing:
- Where the client is a business, the street address of the principal place of business is acceptable as the residential address for the individual signing on its behalf.
- Where that individual leaves the business, you may need to vary the agreement under section 44 to reflect the new arrangement, but you do not need a fresh agreement.
Identity is a precondition, not an onboarding step
Section 36 is drafted as a prohibition rather than a task. An agent must not give immigration assistance to a client unless the agent has taken all reasonable steps to verify their identity and is reasonably satisfied of it. Both limbs, before the work.
The exception is narrow: it does not apply to advice given during an initial consultation.
An intermediary needs the client's written authority
Section 36(3) is the provision that catches practices dealing through relatives, agents overseas, or an employer's HR team. You must not deal with a client through an intermediary unless you have taken all reasonable steps to verify the intermediary's identity, are reasonably satisfied of it, and are reasonably satisfied that the client has agreed in writing to that person dealing with you on their behalf.
The guidance says what to do when an employer signs on an applicant's behalf: satisfy yourself of the applicant's identity, and be reasonably satisfied the applicant agreed in writing to the employer dealing with you. It adds a practical instruction — request verification of that written authority, and if the employer cannot produce it, "seriously question whether the required authority is in place."
Sections 36(5) and (6) extend the same discipline to any third person who has endorsed, nominated or sponsored your client: verify their identity, and satisfy yourself they actually have done so or intend to.
Two clients means two sets of duties
Once you accept that the sponsor and the applicant are both clients, the consequences arrive together.
Conflicts. OMARA's guidance says that representing both a sponsoring business and a visa applicant will likely require you to inform each client in writing of a potential conflict and to receive written confirmation from each that they still wish to receive your assistance — the process section 34 sets out. It puts the reason plainly: the employer and the applicant should be treated as separate clients, and if there is an issue with the employment relationship, you will potentially, if not actually, face a conflict of interest.
Confidentiality. This is the duty that bites daily. Section 35 prohibits disclosing personal information about a client, or a client's affairs, to a third person without that client's written consent. The employer paying your invoice is a third person as regards the applicant's health, character or relationship history. A status update that stays at the level of the nomination is fine. One that explains why the applicant's medical is taking longer is a disclosure — unless you have consent, which is best obtained in the agreement rather than in a hurried phone call.
Instructions. Section 33 requires you to act in each client's legitimate interests and in accordance with the client's instructions. When the employer instructs you to do something in the nomination that is not in the applicant's interests, "the employer is paying" is not an answer.
OMARA describes the agent–client relationship as fiduciary, carrying legal as well as professional conduct obligations. That is the frame to bring to a room where one client is commercially powerful and the other is not.
Money follows the agreement, not the payer
Section 51 prohibits receiving amounts from a client where the money relates to giving immigration assistance and no service agreement covering that assistance is in force. It also requires you to take reasonable steps to ensure nobody else in your business receives such amounts either.
So the sequence matters. If the applicant is a client and the applicant's agreement is not yet signed, money taken for work on their application is being received outside an agreement — even where a sponsor sent it, and even where a separate employer agreement is in place.
The definition of client money reinforces this: it is money received from a client covered by the agreement for work under that agreement. Money that does not map to an agreement and a client is difficult to account for correctly, and section 50 gives you no comfortable category for it.
An intake test worth running
For your five most recent sponsored matters:
- Is there a signed service agreement for the applicant, not only the sponsor?
- Does each agreement carry every client's name, date of birth, address and email if they have one?
- Did you verify identity before assistance began, and can you show it?
- Where someone dealt with you on a client's behalf, do you hold the client's written agreement to that?
- Was the conflict disclosed in writing, and did each client confirm in writing that they still wanted you to act?
- Did any money arrive before the relevant agreement was in force?
- Would a status update you sent last week survive being read as a disclosure about the other client?
Our guide to the first 48 hours of client onboarding covers the sequence these questions imply, and file notes covers recording the conversations where authority and consent are actually given.
Where a system helps
The structural problem is that most practice software has one matter, one contact and one payer, which quietly encodes the assumption the Code rejects. Everything downstream — who gets the portal invite, who sees the document list, who receives the status email — inherits that single relationship.
What helps is being able to hold several clients against one matter, each with their own agreement, their own consent record and their own view, so that sending an update to the employer is a deliberate act rather than the default.
LodgeHQ models sponsors, applicants and payers as separate parties with separate agreements. Start a free trial and check whether your current setup could tell you, for any matter, exactly who your clients are.
Verify before you rely on it
Sponsored-visa arrangements vary enormously, and the answer for a global mobility programme is not the answer for a family business. Read the sources directly: OMARA's Code of Conduct page, its guidance documents, and the Migration Act definition of client in section 306C.
This is general information for migration practices, not legal advice. Where an arrangement raises a question — an overseas intermediary, a related-party sponsor, a conflict you cannot cure with consent — get advice on that arrangement.