Pib

Yea...understand....just ensure you have the money for 2 of the 10 years. But with my insurance I don't have to be concerned about 100K USD....just continue to pay the monthly insurance premium which is deducted automatically from one of my pensions.....it all on autopilot.

From my understanding of several posts in this thread the money does not have to be in "a bank account"...as in one acct or it has to be a bank acct. I say that because several folks in this thread said they met the self insure requirement by submitting docs for their 401K/IRA type acct(s) vs a standard bank acct. And such 401K/IRA accts are usually invested in stocks, bonds, etc....investments which earn more than typical bank savings/checking accts. 401K/IRA accts which a person will slowly draw down over his lifetime and possibly stay above 100K USD for a long time. Additionally, why buy a close to useless and pricey (by age) Thai medical policy when my current U.S. govt policy (Tricare) provides my medical coverage worldwide (age doesn't change monthly premium). Plus if I did buy another policy by law I would have to file my claim with that policy first....see if/what they pay....and then submit to Tricare for payment of the rest....an extended process. For me, I prefer going the insurance route due to the type of insurance I have....going the self-insure would just be a Plan B if I had to resort to it.

Regarding the LTR application/review process which takes around 20 business days (or more). Below BOI Announcement gives an overview of their process which includes coordination by multiple, outside agencies. Below I have partially quoted & bolded the key parts of the announcement....see the weblink for the full announcement. https://ltr.boi.go.th/documents/Announcement of the Office of the Board of Investment_No.3-2565 (EN).pdf

I'm in a very similar boat with my application where I'm using a U.S. govt/military retiree policy which only shows an enrollment date from years ago (when I retired), has unlimited worldwide coverage, no annual expiration date, and will run my lifetime as long as I continue to pay the monthly premium. Just excellent worldwide coverage but it's a govt/military type coverage that does not come with a commercial type policy.....all the info is on their websites about the coverage. I submitted this medical coverage in my application hoping it will qualify under the social security-type coverage which does not make mention of any required expiration date.....hopefully because BOI knows that social security/government-type medical coverage routinely does not come with any end date like a typical commercial policy. I too thought about submitting my application with docs "also showing I had enough money to self-insure (IRA/401K type money)" but then the BOI might have just taken the easy way by approving (hopefully) the application based on being self-insured versus my medical policy. I would rather be approved based on my insurance coverage/policy as that will be on autopilot to the day I die whereas going the self-insure method requires maintaining $100K in an acct (which some people would prefer to do) if going the insurance method is too complicated due to BOI rules. If you are not in a time crunch you may want to consider submitting your application using your insurance policy with explanation that the policy does not have an annual expiration date because of XYZ reason(s)....and see if the BOI approves it. If they don't they will then ask you to submit self-insure docs in lieu of the insurance....then submit the financial proof to self insure. That's my approach. Good luck to both of us.

Interesting they asked for additional docs...but apparently docs you had already provided? If it had been a snake it would have bit them?

Not worried...mostly curious since their online system doesn't seem to give a good view of where an application is in the overall process. I've always hated a "Pending" status as it's so vague as to what that could really mean.

Thanks. But what was your 1st indication after 2 Sep that your application was indeed moving along the BOI review line. Maybe a status change....some notification/email from BOI, etc. Thanks again,

For those who have LTR application processing or already approved approximately how long was it "from the day you submitted your application" until you saw some type of tangible status change in your LTR online acct and/or got a notification/email from BOI asking for more docs or something along those lines. Just some type of status change that indicated your application was actually being reviewed/processed "versus just setting in a BOI rep's inbox" pending processing. I submitted my application earlier this week and the only change I've noticed is the day after I submitted the application the staff name changed from StaffBOI1128 to StaffBOI004. I'm assuming this was just movement of application from the master inbox that receives all new application to a specific BOI rep inbox. Other than that my application just shows a Status of "Pending" and under the LTR menu the popup message that says "Visa is process considering, Please check the status tab." I know the BOI says they will process your application within 20 "business" days which is around a calendar month. From review of this thread (a couple of times) it seems to be a couple of weeks before a person sees some tangible change that his/her application is under serious evaluation....actually moving along the assembly line. Thanks.

I'm not surprised the Wealthy Pensioners is the largest group since the requirements are arguably reasonable although the insurance requirement requiring 10 months being left on the policy when applying can throw a monkey wrench in the application...but at least they offer a 100K USD self-insure option in lieu of a policy or even a social security-type insurance coverage if it provides coverage in Thailand. Once again, arguably reasonable requirements. However, the Wealthy Individual group only having around 88 applicants does not surprise me since the requirements are very high.....four requirements must be met with one of the four requiring a BIG investment in Thailand of USD 500,000 which is on-top of meeting an annual income of 80K USD requirement and having 1M USD in assets under your belt. Insurance requirement same as for Pensioners. Per BOI snapshot below the applicant must fulfill all four requirements....no either or's....must meet all 4. IMO the 500K USD investment in Thailand is the real tough requirement and is probably what is suppressing applications in this group.

My Thai wife renewed her passport here in Bangkok a few months ago....took 2 days from applying to receiving the passport via EMS at our Bangkok home. I think she applied on a Monday mid day and by Wednesday mid day the postman delivered it to our home. This was not Special Express or anything....just Ordinary time frame. Bt1,500 for a 10 year passport plus Bt40 EMS mailing fee. Thai passports are renewed really, really fast. Usually the passport is finished/mailed the next business day after applying and it then takes another 1 to 2 days via EMS to arrive your Thai address if living in Bangkok or surrounding provinces.....3-5 days for other provinces. Be sure to get the 10 year passport vs the 5 year passport. See below weblink for more info https://consular.mfa.go.th/th/publicservice/ค่าธรรมเนียม-ระยะเวลาการผลิตและจัดส่งหนังสือเดินทาง

I just surveyed the 10 richest billionaires (USD) in the world.....and 10 out of 10 said they plan to take Thailand up on this offer since Bt40M (a little over 1M USD) is pocket change. They can then build their dream home on 1 rai of land in Khon Kaen. So, it sounds like Thailand got this one just right.

Yeap...the article says all that's needed is 130K USD equivalent deposited in an Indonesian state-owned bank (not any old bank of your choosing), 4x6cm photo, CV, and a passport with at least 3 years remaining. No mention of a medical insurance requirement.

Yea...."today" mine is only a 3 digit also (004)....but yesterday when I submitted the application it was 1128. Guess that means the application has moved from one BOI staff member to another. But the status still shows Pending just as yesterday.

Well, that gives me hope for my LTR application where I have listed as my medical coverage Tricare, a U.S. military health coverage plan for active duty troops, dependents, and retirees. I'm a military retire and have been using Tricare while retired to Thailand....works great...world coverage. From looking at the type of insurance you have (United Nations After Service Health Insurance) which you mentioned in one of your earlier posts and above posts it seems to be similar to the U.S. military "Tricare" medical coverage. And for military retirees 65 and over it's called "Tricare for Life" which provides worldwide coverage but you must have Medicare Part B....must be paying Part B premium (which I am) to retain Tricare for Life. I think that is similar to your UN insurance. There is no expiration date on the Tricare for Life health coverage and is basically unlimited coverage. Guess I set back now and wait and see what happens.

Congratulations. How long did the whole process take for you....that is, when did you first submit your application? Edit: Never mind....from scanning back thru this entire thread I found posts where you said you submitted your application on 4 Sep with the BOI notifying your of approval on 5 Oct.

Yea...the only place I did significant fine tuning was in the income and medical docs to be uploaded and a couple of memos. They got uploaded this morning with my new draft application...and those attachments had never been uploaded before.

And just for those who haven't created a LTR online acct the completion of the "basic" online application form is easy. Most of your time spent on completing the LTR application will be "putting together the supporting docs to upload like proof of income, medical, etc."

The LTR application website is really slow, glitchy today (25 Oct/Tueday morning) when completing/editing/viewing your application. When hitting Save between pages it can sometimes take 30 seconds before moving to the next page....one time I got a time-out notice. I'm right here in Bangkok on an AIS Fibre 500Mb speed connection. And when I first logged on today it didn't show my Draft Application which I had been tweaking for a week....in fact, no application was showing. So, I log off and log back on again and now the application is showing. Then while working on the application it created a duplicated application but with missing data. And then by mistake I deleted my original draft instead of the duplicate draft...and that duplicate draft was missing a lot of data. So, I delete that remaining draft and started from ground zero and reentered the application from scratch but the system was very slow during that process. I've got it reentered with all the attachments/uploads and I've double/tripled checked it, but will wait until later today to submit if the their system seems to be back to normal speed. Yeap, I've never seen it this slow, glitchy as this Tuesday morning.....maybe overloaded with people checking on status.

Congrats. You have now been officially recognized by the U. S. government as an "Old Geezer." A recognition I also received years back. And if you have your last SS annual statement handy take a look at the area which shows the total amount of SS tax "you" paid-in over your work life (disregard the amounts/entries about Medicare tax paid as that a separate benefit and Medicare/SS taxes your employer(s) paid-in on your behalf). Divide whatever gross amount your monthly SS pension is going to be into that total SS Taxes You Paid Amount....and I think you will see you will recover all of that money around 4 years of SS pension payments. It will vary from individual to individual as to the payback time....but bottom line the SS taxes you paid over your work life was a very good investment (assuming you live around 4 more years). P.S. standby for the probably comments from those who will say if you could have instead invested those "SS Taxes You Paid" into the stock market, gold, cryptocurrencies, etc., you would have a much bigger next egg of money. We won't talk about "if" you would have actually made those investments (many people would not have) and picked the right investments versus spending the money on bills, vacations, a new iPhone, a new car, etc.

Just to supplement the statement I bolded above regarding the SMART Visa program that kicked off in 2018 from a 21 Aug 2022 Bangkok Bank news article I just stumbled across it said since 2018 there have been approx 1,200 SMART Visas issued. Now, I don't know how many zillion the govt was initially estimating to apply for the SMART visa when announcing it 4 years ago but business day-wise over 4 years that works out to a little over 1 SMART Visa (or 1.2 more accurately) approved per BOI business day. I wonder if the LTR Visa program will do any better. IMO I think it will not get anywhere close to the 1 million over 5 years (200K per year) the govt has estimated mostly due to the income requirement being too high and the insurance requirement which isn't very flexible (most likely due to the insurance mafia lobbying). If the govt wants to reach a 1 million LTR visa issued they need to lower the income requirement and add much more flexibility in acceptable medical insurance.

What would be the difference with your current 1 year visa/extension of stay. Say you have to leave at the 10 month point before you could apply for another 1 year extension and then you couldn't get back until say 1 or 2 months after your extension expired. You would have to start all over with a new visa/extension. Expiration dates suck. But I do hope since this LTR is 5 + 5 visa that they would allow some leniency/special handling on renewing at the mid point....but then again maybe not.

What I'm providing is a passport type picture which shows my upper chest and hansum face. Now at the photo shop I just wore a tee-shirt, but I had them magically finalized the photo with me in a suit and tie. I got some hard copy photos and the shop sent the file image via LINE. The file image is now uploaded to the application....one hansum devil I am.

Regarding folks who do want to see the actual online application you can signup which is easy and fast. Then surf around an application....even start a draft. BUT, DO NOT upload any docs until you are ready to really apply/submit an application because you may not be able to delete "some" docs you upload.

Initially I'm not going to upload my tax return unless I gotta....like they come back later and ask for it. But for the pensions statements/letters I'm uploading I'm including a memo that briefly explains I'm a govt retiree, receive X-amount of lifetime govt pensions, fixed income, etc. That memo will also included a table listing each pension, the amount, and some remarks that some are 100% tax free, not reportable on a tax return, etc.

But aren't all of the LTRs "approved" (or maybe you can even say "issued") by the BOI regardless of whether the actual visa may be issued/stamped into your passport like at BOI immigration or a Thai embassy/consulate? The BOI basically approves/directs/tells the immigration section at BOI or Thai embassy/consulate that issue of a LTR visa is approved...the applicant now only needs to fork out the $50K payment to get the visa stamped into his passport.