For Doctors, Dentists and Specialists

Medicine earns the income.
Strategy keeps the wealth.

The LMI waiver is well understood. Every specialist broker offers it. What changes your financial position over twenty years is not the waiver itself, but what you do with the capacity it creates. Charter Finance works with medical professionals on the structure, not just the transaction.

Start a conversation The Charter Finance approach
The Charter Finance approach

A rate is a product. Strategy is a position.

Most brokers who work with doctors do one thing well: they secure the LMI waiver and they negotiate a competitive rate. That is the table-stakes version of specialist medico lending, and it saves you tens of thousands at settlement. It does not, on its own, build wealth.

Charter Finance starts from a different premise. High-earning medical professionals have a rare combination of strong income, time scarcity, and compounding wealth potential. The decisions that matter most are not which bank to use for this purchase, but how every lending decision across twenty years connects to a coherent strategy: which debt is deductible, which is not, which property anchors long-term capital growth, and how practice ownership and personal lending interact.

The waiver is the easy part. The architecture that sits around it is where wealth is either built or quietly eroded.

What most doctors never hear

Three quiet costs of product-first advice.

I.
The time-poor premium

Medical professionals make high-stakes financial decisions in the gaps between clinical commitments. That time scarcity gets monetised by whoever advises you. Most brokers quote a rate and close the deal. A competitive rate on a poorly structured loan costs more over twenty years than a slightly higher rate on a well-structured one.

II.
The default-lender bias

The bank you have always used is the bank that gets you. That is rarely the bank that gets your income best. Two lenders assessing identical hospital salaries can produce a borrowing capacity gap of thirty percent, purely because one assesses overtime at 100% and another at 80%. Loyalty does not pay. Analysis does.

III.
The transaction horizon

Most lending relationships end at settlement. A year later you are back in market with no memory of what was agreed, no review of the position that was built, and no accountability for the strategy that was promised. Wealth compounds across decades. Advice should too.

What Charter Finance actually does

The work beyond the waiver.

Four structural decisions that compound over a medical career. These are the conversations that rarely happen at a bank branch or with a product-led broker, and the ones that most affect where your wealth lands at retirement.

01 · Income architecture

Reading your income the way the right lender reads it.

Hospital base plus overtime plus allowances plus locum plus private billings plus fractional practice income is not one income stream to most lenders. It is five separate assessments, each with its own shading rule. Charter Finance matches your actual income profile to the lenders whose policy treats each component most favourably. The same applicant often sees a borrowing capacity difference of $500,000 to $1 million across lenders.

02 · Debt sequencing

Deductible debt first, non-deductible debt last.

Every dollar of non-deductible home loan debt costs a doctor on a 47% marginal rate roughly twice what the same dollar of deductible investment debt costs. The order in which you draw lending, retain equity, and structure offset accounts decides whether your balance sheet compounds tax-efficiently or bleeds after-tax cashflow for decades. Most doctors are never shown the difference.

03 · Practice and property

The clinical business as a wealth asset.

For practice owners, the distinction between commercial premises lending, business-goodwill finance, and personal home loans is the difference between an efficient wealth structure and a collection of unrelated loans. Some lenders offer 100% LVR on commercial premises for AHPRA-registered doctors. The sequencing of these acquisitions, and whether they sit in your name, a trust, or an SMSF, has substantial implications at retirement.

04 · Twenty-year view

Reviewing the position, not just writing the loan.

Lender policy changes quarterly. Interest rates shift. Your income profile changes as you move from registrar to consultant to partner to owner. A loan that was the right structure in 2021 is rarely the right structure today. Charter Finance reviews lending positions annually against current market policy, because the deal that stopped working is the deal that is quietly losing you money.

Stage-specific strategy

Your career stage defines the strategy.

A registrar buying a first home and a consultant building an investment portfolio should not be given the same advice. Charter Finance tailors the structure to where you are now and where you are heading.

Intern & Resident
Focus First property with minimal deposit. Access the waiver. Preserve liquidity for cost-of-living.
Most lenders will assess an intern or resident for up to 95% LVR without LMI, despite the lower base income. The question is not whether you qualify. It is whether you buy at the ceiling of your capacity or deliberately below it, to leave headroom for investment property within three to five years. Buying the biggest home you can afford at this stage often costs a decade of portfolio growth.
Registrar
Focus Upgrading the home or starting an investment property. Overtime counted properly.
Registrar income is lumpy: base salary plus variable overtime plus on-call loadings plus locum shifts. The lender who assesses this income at 100% unlocks materially more capacity than the lender who shades it at 80%. Structure the first investment property now, while borrowing capacity is easiest to expand, not after you become a consultant when more income but more liabilities can offset each other.
Consultant
Focus Portfolio structuring. Debt sequencing. Upgrading the family home without sacrificing investments.
Consultant-level income opens genuine portfolio capacity: multiple investment properties at 90% LVR without LMI, deductible debt across holdings, strategic use of offset facilities to reduce non-deductible home debt. The mistakes most consultants make are structural: too much equity tied up in the family home, too little deductible debt, investment properties owned directly when a trust would have served better for both asset protection and succession.
Practice Owner
Focus Practice acquisition. Commercial premises. Integrated personal and business lending.
Practice ownership changes the lending conversation. Commercial premises at 100% LVR for owner-occupied clinical space. Goodwill finance on practice acquisitions or partnership buy-ins. Personal home loans that need to sit alongside commercial debt without mutual interference. Charter Finance works across both sides of the position: the practice, and the person behind it.
Pre-retirement
Focus Practice sale. Portfolio restructuring. Intergenerational wealth and debt elimination.
The five to ten years before exit are the most consequential for wealth preservation. Restructuring debt for tax-efficient wind-down, sequencing property sales to manage CGT, positioning practice goodwill for sale or partner-buyout, establishing lending facilities for the next generation of the family: these decisions set the retirement position. A broker who turned up at settlement and disappeared is not the adviser for this stage. A long-term relationship is.
In their own words

Clients who know why this matters.

“Charter Finance always handle my affairs with professionalism, precision and proactive thinking that I haven't found anywhere else.”

Dr Larry Kalish
Surgeon

“Dean and the team at Charter Finance were nothing short of exceptional, helping us to secure a loan to purchase our first property. They worked tirelessly and kept us in the loop at every step of the process. Would absolutely recommend to anyone looking for a loan.”

Dr Andrew Robertson
Doctor

“The team at Charter Finance are incredible. Professional, knowledgeable and supportive throughout the entire journey. I can't recommend them highly enough. Thank you all, very appreciative of everything you have done and always do.”

Dr Annie Lang
Doctor

“The team at Charter Finance did a fantastic job with our loans. They were able to use their extensive expertise to our advantage in negotiating the best outcome in a non-standard set of circumstances. In addition, they quickly and calmly managed hiccups in the valuation and approval process. Come settlement day we were absolutely confident everything would go through smoothly, which it did.”

Dr Sam McGinness
Doctor

“Dean and his team endured a long journey with us over a number of years as we searched for our dream home. They worked tirelessly and inventively to procure the funds we needed. They consistently went above and beyond and were genuinely invested in our personal goal. Always professional, honest and offered excellent advice at every point of the process.”

Dr Naidoo
Doctor

“Dean and his team are exceptional. Always achieve a great outcome even when the banks make the whole process very difficult these days. Competent, thorough, knowledgeable and transparent. These guys know what they are doing.”

Dr C Thelen
Doctor
Questions doctors actually ask

Straight answers, no product pitch.

If your question is not here, book a conversation and ask it directly. No cost, no obligation.

The LMI (lenders mortgage insurance) waiver lets eligible medical professionals borrow up to 95% of a property's value without paying mortgage insurance, a cost that would otherwise add tens of thousands to the loan. On a $1.5 million property with a 10% deposit, standard LMI is around $35,000 to $45,000. For AHPRA-registered doctors, dentists, and specialists at eligible lenders, that cost is removed. The waiver itself is well known and most specialist brokers offer it. What most advisors do not do is show you whether taking the full LVR with waived LMI is actually the right decision for your wealth position, or whether a lower LVR with different structure serves you better long term.
Yes. Most doctor-specialist lenders do not apply minimum income requirements for AHPRA-registered medical professionals, recognising that a registrar on $90,000 today will earn $300,000 as a consultant. Many lenders accept 95% LVR without LMI even at junior stages. The critical issues at this career stage are not whether you qualify, but how your income is structured (casual, shift, rotation-based), how overtime is assessed, and whether you are using the waiver in a way that serves a 20-year wealth plan rather than just a first property.
Standard borrowers have overtime and allowances shaded by 20% in most lender serviceability calculators. For eligible medical professionals, several lenders assess 100% of overtime, shift allowances, on-call, and locum income. This is one of the most commercially valuable features of medico lending policy and one of the least understood: two lenders with the same advertised rate can produce materially different borrowing capacity for a hospital-based doctor because one assesses overtime at 80% and the other at 100%. The difference on a registrar earning $80,000 base plus $50,000 overtime can be $400,000 or more of borrowing capacity. Charter Finance knows which lenders apply which policy, current to the month.
Individual ownership accesses the 50% capital gains tax discount on properties held more than 12 months and offers the simplest path to the LMI waiver. A discretionary trust provides asset protection (relevant for doctors exposed to professional indemnity risk) and income-splitting flexibility, but typically cannot access the LMI waiver because most lender policies require the borrower to be the AHPRA-registered individual. A company or SMSF structure has narrower use cases. The right answer depends on your medico-legal exposure, your family structure, your stage of career, and whether asset protection or tax efficiency is the higher priority. Charter Finance does not provide tax advice but works with your accountant and solicitor to ensure the lending structure supports whichever entity your advisors recommend, before the first loan is written.
Borrowing capacity depends on income assessment, existing liabilities, and lender policy, not on profession alone. That said, a consultant specialist earning $400,000 per year with minimal debt will typically qualify for $2.5 million to $3.5 million in total home lending across major and select non-bank lenders at 2026 policy settings. A registrar on $180,000 base plus overtime will typically access $900,000 to $1.3 million. A GP practice owner with $500,000 declared profit plus property can often stretch to $4 million. The variance between lenders on identical income profiles is substantial: the same applicant can receive maximum borrowing offers that vary by 30% or more across lenders. The lender who lends you the most is not always the lender who is right for you.
Eligible medical professionals typically access interest rate discounts of 0.10% to 0.30% below standard variable or fixed rates at most major lenders, plus waived annual package fees at some lenders. The actual rate depends on LVR, loan size, lender competition at the time, and whether the loan is owner-occupied or investment. Chasing the lowest rate alone is the wrong optimisation at doctor income levels: the difference in real wealth over 20 years between a well-structured loan and a poorly structured loan at the same interest rate is typically much larger than the difference between two rates 0.15% apart. Rate matters. Structure matters more.
Going direct to one bank gives you access to that bank's policy, rate card, and interpretation of your income. Using a specialist broker gives you access to 30-plus lender policies and, critically, to the knowledge of which specific policy quirks work in your favour. A bank cannot tell you that another lender would approve you faster, accept your income structure more generously, or offer a better long-term position. Most significantly, a bank sells you a product. A broker who understands doctor income can build a structure that serves your wealth trajectory over twenty years, not just the immediate transaction. Charter Finance does not charge doctors for this advice. The lender pays the introduction fee on settlement. You get the benefit of the advice regardless.
Yes, at most specialist medico lenders, subject to the same AHPRA registration and eligible-profession requirements. This is one of the most strategically valuable features of the medico policy landscape. Doctors with existing home equity can build an investment property portfolio at 90% LVR or 95% LVR without LMI, preserving cash for tax-deductible debt rather than non-deductible deposits. The sequencing of owner-occupied and investment purchases, and how each is structured, has a larger long-term wealth impact than the choice of property itself. This is where planning ahead of the purchase pays.
Practice acquisition and commercial premises lending are separate products from residential doctor home loans, with different lenders, different LVRs, and different assessment methodologies. Some lenders extend favourable commercial terms to AHPRA-registered practitioners, including up to 100% LVR on owner-occupied commercial property for doctors purchasing clinical premises. Structuring the acquisition vehicle correctly (personally, through a practice company, through a unit trust, or through SMSF property) has substantial implications for asset protection, tax, succession, and eventual sale. Charter Finance works on both sides: the practice or premises acquisition, and the personal lending position that sits alongside it.
Because many major banks assess hospital income using conservative averaging rules, shade overtime at 80%, require two full financial years of consistent private billings before including them, and disregard certain allowances. The bank's calculator is not reflecting your actual financial position. Specialist lenders who understand hospital and private-practice income will assess the same applicant materially differently, sometimes unlocking $1 million or more of additional capacity on the same underlying income. The answer is rarely to earn more. It is usually to apply to the lender whose policy matches your income profile.
Four, in our experience. First, buying the first home too big, absorbing most of the available borrowing capacity into non-deductible debt that then constrains investment for a decade. Second, staying with one bank out of loyalty or inertia rather than reviewing the full lender market annually, costing tens of thousands over the life of a loan. Third, treating the LMI waiver as a savings opportunity rather than a leverage tool: using it to buy more house rather than to preserve equity for investment. Fourth, delaying the wealth conversation until late career, when compounding has already left its largest gains on the table. Each of these is reversible. Most doctors would benefit from a second opinion on their structure even if they are happy with their current broker or bank.
Most specialist medico brokers are product-led: they secure the LMI waiver and the rate, and the relationship ends at settlement. Charter Finance's view is that the waiver and the rate are the starting point, not the strategy. The real work begins with how the loan is structured for long-term wealth: debt sequencing for maximum compounding, tax-efficient use of deductible versus non-deductible debt, integration with practice ownership and investment property, and periodic review across a 20-year horizon. Charter Finance is boutique, intentionally, because this level of engagement is not scalable. The outcome is that doctors who work with Charter Finance typically build more wealth with less stress over 20 years than those who shop for rate alone.

The above is general information only. It does not constitute financial, tax, property, or legal advice. Lender policies change. Current rates, LVRs, and credit criteria should be verified with Charter Finance or the relevant lender before proceeding. For advice specific to your situation, book a conversation.

Start the conversation

A second opinion is free.
A good structure compounds.

Book a fifteen-minute conversation with Charter Finance. No product pitch, no obligation, just a clear-eyed review of whether your current lending position is serving your wealth plan as well as it could.

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