BOI expert leaving: notify BOI before hiring a replacement

01Notify the Board of Investment first — this comes before hiring a replacement

Under Section 25 of the Investment Promotion Act, the skilled workers and experts a promoted company brings in are attached to a specific approved position — see our article on sending Chinese staff to a BOI-promoted company for the two-step logic of position approval followed by placement. When that person leaves, the position does not automatically clear itself or pass to the next hire — the company must file a termination notice (Form F FR NI 22) with the BOI Secretary-General, stating:

• The reference number and date of the original position approval
• The departing employee's name, nationality, passport number and position held
• The number of accompanying dependents
• The actual or planned departure date
• Flight and travel details, or the name of the affiliated company the person is transferring to (if this is an internal transfer rather than a true departure)

Where more than one person is involved, a separate list must be attached. The form is filed in five copies, together with the departing employee's passport, and is also used to handle the corresponding Immigration procedures.

02Once notified, the BOI holds the position open for a replacement

After the termination notice is filed, the BOI reserves the position pending a replacement — meaning the company does not need to apply for a brand-new position approval from scratch. But it also cannot skip straight to a replacement application without first filing the termination notice. The order is: notify the departure and hold the position, then apply for the replacement — doing it out of order tends to trigger requests for additional paperwork.

The replacement application requires: a company cover letter, a copy of the original position approval, the new hire's Bio-Data (one set per person), proof of education and work experience (one set per person), and a passport copy (one set per person); if the replacement is for a Managing Director-level position, a copy of the company registration is also required. The actual processing time quoted in BOI's paper-based procedure and its online e-Expert system documents do not agree with each other, so we do not quote a specific number of days here as a commitment — check the current position with the Board of Investment or the Foreign Expert Services Division.

03If the gap can't wait: a 30-day emergency temporary work permit

The standard two-step process (position approval, then placement) takes time to complete. If the business genuinely cannot wait, there is a bridging option: the emergency temporary work permit (form code ชค.30 / F FR NI 20), valid for 30 days from the date it is granted, for situations where a skilled worker or expert needs to work in Thailand urgently and there is no time to complete the standard two-step process.

Required documents: a copy of the promotion certificate, a passport copy (one set per person), and the ชค.30 form itself (three sets per person). The form must be signed by the applicant personally and countersigned by an authorized company representative with the company seal affixed; a BOI officer approves it and assigns the permit number.

This is a bridge, not a substitute. Before the 30 days run out, the standard replacement application still needs to go through — the emergency permit is not a long-term staffing solution.

04This runs alongside labor-law termination, not instead of it

When a foreign expert leaves, a company is actually handling three things at the same time:

• Labor-law termination and severance — how severance pay is calculated and which situations reset it, covered in our article on the costliest trap in terminating staff in Thailand
• Visa and work permit cancellation at Immigration / the Department of Employment — once the employment relationship ends, the basis for the person's stay goes with it, covered in our article on what happens to a visa after departures, transfers and job changes
• The Section 25 termination notice and replacement application at the BOI — the subject of this article

The third item is the one most often missed, because it does not block whether the departing person can leave — it blocks whether the next hire can step into the position cleanly. When a company is planning a staff change, it is worth building the BOI notice and replacement application into the timeline in advance, rather than picking it up only after the person has already gone.