ACL 390611 | MFAA Member | Established 2005
Medical and Professional Home Loans.Above 80% Without LMI.
Some lenders waive lenders mortgage insurance for eligible professions, which can save a substantial premium on a smaller deposit. That is real money. It is also the smaller half of the problem, because on a high professional income the thing limiting you is usually the study loan, not the deposit.
15 minutes, around your roster. Bring your occupation, your income shape and your study loan balance. No paperwork, no credit check, no obligation. If the waiver is worth less than the capacity you would get elsewhere, we will tell you. Lenders pay us a commission on settlement and we disclose it in writing before any work begins.
Intellect Finance – Professional Lending
Independent since 2005 | ACL 390611What Is a Medical or Professional Home Loan?
It is an ordinary home loan on which some lenders waive lenders mortgage insurance for borrowers in eligible professions, letting them borrow above 80 per cent of the property value without paying a premium. It is a waiver of one cost rather than a separate product. Which professions qualify, and to what loan to value ratio, is lender policy and differs sharply.
Understanding what the waiver is worth matters, because it is easy to overrate. ASIC Moneysmart explains that lenders mortgage insurance protects the lender rather than the borrower, and is generally charged above 80 per cent of the property value. Waiving it saves you that premium. It does not improve your rate, increase your capacity, or change how your income is read.
For most professionals the binding constraint sits elsewhere. A large study loan, income arriving through a partnership or service entity, and a serviceability assessment built around payslips will each do more to your borrowing capacity than the premium ever will. That is the part of this worth getting right.
Common Situations
Six Professional Positions Read Six Different Ways
Your occupation decides whether a waiver is available. How you are paid decides almost everything else.
Salaried registrar or hospital doctor with a big HECS debt
Payslips are straightforward, so the assessment is clean. The study loan is the constraint, and at this income it is often the only one. Worth knowing exactly what it is costing you in capacity before you decide whether to pay it down.
Specialist billing through a company or service entity
The accounts and the personal return can tell very different stories, and lenders vary enormously in how they read the gap. This is where the right lender is worth far more than the waiver.
Partner in a law or accounting firm
Partnership distributions, capital accounts and drawings are all assessed differently between lenders, and a first-year partner with a short history is a different file from a ten-year partner with the same income.
Locum or contractor working across multiple practices
Income is genuine and often high, but it is irregular and arrives from several payers. Length of history and contract type usually matter more to the assessment than the total does.
Buying your first home while still training
The waiver and the first home buyer schemes can interact, and sometimes only one of them is worth using. See first home buyer loans for the scheme conditions.
Building a property portfolio on a professional income
Waivers are usually most valuable on the first purchase and least valuable later, when capacity rather than deposit is the binding constraint. See investment loans.
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Joseph Sukkar
Principal Broker · ACL 390611
Who You’re Dealing With
Built on 25 Years in Australian Finance
Joseph Sukkar started in finance in 2000 and founded Intellect Finance in Penrith in 2005. Since then the team has arranged more than 6,500 loans for clients across Australia, from first homes to complex commercial and asset finance.
Residential lending sits with Moufid, our Head of Residential Lending, who spends a good deal of his time explaining partnership income to credit assessors. On a professional file the useful work happens before anything is lodged. It means checking your specific occupation against current lender policy rather than a published list, and pricing the premium a waiver would save against the capacity and pricing a lender without one would give you. On a lot of these files those two numbers do not point the same way.
100+ Lenders Including
Accreditation with a lender is not an endorsement by it. Which lender suits you is decided by your file, not by who is on this list.
Want to Know What the Waiver Is Actually Worth?
Fifteen minutes, around your roster. No credit check.What Actually Decides It
On a Professional Income the Deposit Is Rarely the Constraint
The LMI waiver solves a deposit problem, and most professionals asking about it do not have a deposit problem. They have a study loan, an income structure and an assessment method problem. Six things decide what you can actually borrow, and only the first one is what this product is sold on.
The waiver is worth the premium and nothing else
Lenders mortgage insurance protects the lender, not you, and is generally charged where you borrow above 80 per cent of the property value. Waiving it removes that cost from your purchase. It does not lower your interest rate, raise your borrowing capacity, or make the assessment easier. Know the size of the premium you are avoiding, then judge the offer against that number.
The study loan becomes 10 per cent of everything at the top threshold
For 2026-27 the compulsory repayment threshold is $69,528. Between $69,529 and $129,717 you repay 15 cents in each dollar above the threshold. From $129,718 to $186,050 it is $9,028 plus 17 cents in the dollar. At $186,051 and over it becomes 10 per cent of your total repayment income, not of the amount above the threshold. On $250,000 that is $25,000 a year, assessed as a commitment before anyone looks at your mortgage.
Your structure may not move your income
The ATO states that only individuals can earn personal services income, and that an individual can earn it directly as a sole trader or through another entity such as a company, partnership or trust. Where the personal services income rules apply, that income must be attributed. A structure built for tax or asset protection reasons does not necessarily change what shows up on the return a credit assessor reads.
Four income shapes and four different assessments
Salaried, sole trader or contractor, partner in a partnership, and paid through a company or trust are read four different ways by the same lender, and differently again by the next one. Two doctors on identical gross incomes can be assessed tens of thousands apart purely on how the money arrives. This is where lender selection earns its keep.
The buffer and the debt-to-income limit both apply to you
APRA requires lenders to assess you at your actual rate plus a buffer of at least three percentage points. Separately, since 1 February 2026 banks may write no more than 20 per cent of new mortgage lending at a debt-to-income ratio of six or higher. High earners buying in expensive suburbs are exactly the borrowers that quota constrains, so which lender you approach, and when, matters more than it used to.
Your income shape changes as you progress and so does the file
Registrar to fellow, employee to contractor, associate to partner, salaried to practice owner. Each transition resets your history in the eyes of an assessor, and applying six months on either side of one can produce very different answers. If a change is coming, that is worth planning around rather than discovering.
Checked 1 September 2026. Sources: lenders mortgage insurance, ASIC Moneysmart; study and training loan thresholds and rates for 2026-27, the ATO; personal services income, the ATO and its guidance on what to do when the PSI rules apply; the serviceability buffer and the debt-to-income limit, APRA; Best Interests Duty, ASIC Regulatory Guide 273. Study loan thresholds change every income year. Everything else on this page is described in the important information at the foot of the page.
The comparison worth running is the premium you would save against the borrowing capacity and pricing you could get somewhere that does not offer a waiver at all. Ask us to run both.
The Honest Comparison
Chase the Waiver or Chase the Capacity?
These pull in different directions more often than the category admits. Both sides, properly.
Pick the lender that lends you the most
- Reads partnership, contractor or entity income the way it actually works, which can be worth far more than a premium
- Opens up properties a waiver lender’s assessment would not reach
- Often the same lenders that handle a complex professional file well at renewal and on the next purchase
- You pay the LMI premium if you are borrowing above 80 per cent
- That premium is a real, immediate cost, and on a large loan it is not small
Use the professional LMI waiver
- Removes the premium entirely where you qualify, which is money kept rather than money saved over time
- Lets a smaller deposit buy sooner, which matters most early in a career
- Deposit stays intact for the things a deposit is usually raided for
- Narrows the panel to lenders offering the waiver, which may not be the ones that read your income most favourably
- Worth nothing at all if you were going to be under 80 per cent anyway
If you have a twenty per cent deposit, the waiver is worth nothing to you. It removes a cost you were never going to incur. That sounds obvious written down, and it is still the single most common reason people come to this page for a product they do not need.
Where it is genuinely valuable is early. A registrar or a newly admitted lawyer with a strong income, a small deposit and years of saving ahead of them is exactly who this exists for, and for that person the premium avoided is real money kept at the moment it is hardest to find.
Later in a career the calculation usually inverts. Once the deposit is not the problem, the question is which lender will lend you the most against income that arrives through a partnership or a service entity, and the answer is frequently a lender with no waiver at all. We will price both and tell you which wins on your numbers, including when that means a lender who pays us less.
One more thing worth saying plainly. Nothing on this page will get you a waiver you do not qualify for, and eligibility is the lender’s decision, not ours. If your occupation is not on their list, no amount of presentation changes that, and we will say so on the first call rather than after an application has marked your credit file.
Find Out Which Wins on Your Numbers
We will price the waiver against the lender that lends most on partnership or service entity income and tell you which wins. Fifteen minutes, around your roster.The Difference
The Waiver Is the Easy Part. Your Income Is Not.
Any broker can tell you a waiver exists. The work is reading a professional income correctly and finding the lender who reads it the same way.
We Price the Waiver Against the Alternative
The premium you would avoid, against the capacity and pricing available from lenders that do not offer a waiver at all. On an early-career file the waiver usually wins. On a partner or practice owner file it frequently does not, and we will show you the arithmetic either way.
Eligibility Is Checked Rather Than Assumed
Profession lists, registration and membership conditions, minimum income requirements and maximum loan to value ratios all differ between lenders and all change. We confirm your specific occupation against current policy before anything is lodged, because an application that marks your credit file for a waiver you never qualified for is a pure loss.
No Fee. Not Even Clawback.
We do not charge you for the comparison, the structuring or the application, on any loan type. If you discharge the loan early we wear the clawback ourselves rather than invoicing you for it, which plenty of brokers do. Lenders pay a commission on settlement, disclosed to you in writing before any work begins.
Legally On Your Side
A loan for a home you will live in, or for a residential investment property, is regulated consumer credit whatever your occupation. Best Interests Duty applies, so we must act in your interests and give them priority where they conflict with ours. Those obligations have applied to mortgage brokers since 1 January 2021.
The Process
How a Professional Home Loan Comes Together
Four steps, and the first two are usually the ones that change the number.
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15 minutes
Your occupation your income shape and your study loan
What you do, how you are paid, what your study loan balance is and what deposit you have. No documents and no credit check. You finish the call knowing whether a waiver is available to you, what the premium would have been, and what your study loan is costing you in capacity.
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We model
Waiver against capacity side by side
What a waiver lender would offer you, and what a lender without one would offer instead. Two numbers, honestly compared. On a lot of professional files these do not point the same way, and the gap can be large.
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You gather
Documents
More here than on a salaried file if you are in a partnership or an entity. We confirm exactly what your chosen lender wants before you go looking for any of it.
- Photo identification
- Evidence of registration or professional membership
- Two recent payslips, if salaried
- Two years of personal tax returns and notices of assessment
- Entity or partnership financials, where relevant
- Contracts or letters of engagement, if contracting
- Study loan balance from your ATO account
- Evidence of your deposit and existing debts
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We manage
Submission through to settlement
We present the income the way that lender’s credit team needs to see it, manage the valuation and conditions, and coordinate with your conveyancer. Where the file is complex we would rather explain it up front to a credit assessor than have it declined and appealed.
Track Record
Independent Since 2005
Joe Sukkar started in finance in 2000 and founded the practice five years later. Residential lending sits with Moufid, who spends a good deal of his time explaining partnership income to credit assessors.
Related Options
Other Options Worth Comparing
The waiver is one lever. These are the others that move the number.
First home buyer loans
The schemes and the waiver can interact, and sometimes only one is worth using.
Mortgage pre-approval
Worth reading before you test eligibility, because every application marks your file.
Investment loans
Where capacity rather than deposit becomes the constraint, and structure decides the tax.
Refinance home loan
Once you are comfortably under 80 per cent, the waiver stops mattering and pricing starts.
Low doc loans
A different situation entirely, for borrowers who cannot produce standard income evidence.
Every home loan we arrange
Back up to the full residential range if none of these is quite it.
Find Out Which Lever Is Worth More.
Fifteen minutes and you will have both numbers.Questions Answered
Medical and Professional Home Loan FAQs
The questions professional borrowers ask us most often before getting in touch.
What is a medical or professional home loan?
It is an ordinary home loan on which some lenders waive lenders mortgage insurance for borrowers in eligible professions, allowing them to borrow above 80 per cent of the property value without paying a premium. It is a waiver of one cost, not a separate product. Which professions qualify, and to what loan to value ratio, is lender credit policy and differs sharply between them.
What is the LMI waiver actually worth?
Exactly the premium you would otherwise have paid, and nothing else. ASIC Moneysmart explains that lenders mortgage insurance protects the lender, not you, and is generally charged where you borrow more than 80 per cent of the property value. A waiver removes that cost. It does not improve your interest rate, increase your borrowing capacity, or change how your income is assessed.
Which professions are eligible?
That is set by each lender and the lists differ enough that no general answer is honest. Medical practitioners appear on almost every list. Beyond that, dentists, veterinarians, optometrists, pharmacists, lawyers, accountants and some engineering and finance roles appear on some lists and not others, often with conditions about registration, membership or income level. We check your specific occupation against current policy rather than working from a published list.
Why is my borrowing capacity lower than I expected on a high income?
Usually the study loan. For the 2026-27 income year the ATO sets the compulsory repayment threshold at $69,528, and above $186,050 of repayment income the compulsory repayment is 10 per cent of your total repayment income, not 10 per cent of the amount above the threshold. On $250,000 that is $25,000 a year, assessed as a commitment before a lender considers the mortgage.
Does paying off my HECS or HELP debt increase what I can borrow?
It removes the compulsory repayment from your assessed commitments, which for a high earner can be substantial. Whether paying it down early is a good use of your money is a separate question, and it depends on the indexation rate, your other debts and what else you would do with the cash. That is a question for you and your accountant. We can tell you what the repayment is costing you in borrowing capacity, which is the part we can actually calculate.
I earn through a company or trust. Does that change what a lender sees?
Often less than people expect. The ATO states that only individuals can earn personal services income, and that an individual can earn it either directly as a sole trader or through another entity such as a company, partnership or trust. Where the PSI rules apply, that income has to be attributed. So the structure may not move the income, and the return a credit assessor reads may look very different from the entity accounts.
Is this the same as a low doc loan?
No, and the difference matters. A low doc loan is for a borrower who cannot produce standard income evidence. A professional borrowing on a waiver usually has every document there is. The problem is not missing evidence, it is that fully documented income arriving through a partnership, service entity or company gets read by an assessor who is looking for payslips. See low doc loans if reduced documentation is genuinely your situation.
Does Best Interests Duty apply to a medical or professional home loan?
Yes. A loan to buy a home you will live in, or to buy or improve a residential investment property, is regulated consumer credit under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009, whatever your occupation or income. So we are legally required to act in your best interests and, where interests conflict, to give priority to yours. Those obligations have applied to mortgage brokers since 1 January 2021.
Visit Us
Penrith Based.Clients Australia-Wide.
Penrith is our head office and the one you can walk into without an appointment. We also meet clients at Parramatta and in the Sydney CBD by arrangement. Most of the process runs by phone, email and video, so we settle loans in every state.
Parramatta
Suite 23, Level 1, 181 Church St, Parramatta NSW 2150
Mortgage broker Parramatta →Ready When You Are
Find Out What the Waiver Is Worth to You.
Fifteen minutes with a residential specialist, booked around your roster. Tell us your occupation, how you are paid and your study loan balance, and we’ll tell you whether a waiver is available, what premium it saves, and what a lender without one would lend you instead. If the waiver is not the better deal, we’ll say so.
No credit check, no paperwork, no obligation. Penrith based, clients Australia-wide. Intellect Finance Pty Ltd, ACL 390611.
A loan for a home you will live in, or for a residential investment property, is regulated consumer credit, so Intellect Finance is legally required to act in your best interests under the Best Interests Duty in the National Consumer Credit Protection Act. Eligibility for a lenders mortgage insurance waiver is determined by individual lenders, not by us, and no waiver is guaranteed. Study loan thresholds are set by the ATO and change each income year. Nothing on this page is credit assistance or tax advice, and no outcome is guaranteed.
Intellect Finance Pty Ltd | Australian Credit Licence 390611 | MFAA Member | AFCA Member
Important information General information only. Not credit assistance, tax advice or an offer of credit. We charge you no fee. Every caveat and source on this page is collected here. Tap to read.
General information only. The content on this page is general in nature and does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. It is not credit assistance, financial advice, legal advice or tax advice, and it is not an offer of credit. You should consider whether it is appropriate for you and seek your own advice before acting on it.
No waiver is guaranteed, and eligibility is not ours to decide. Whether any lender waives lenders mortgage insurance for your occupation, to what loan to value ratio, on what income and subject to what registration or membership conditions, is that lender’s credit policy. It is not published law, it differs substantially between lenders, and it changes without notice. We do not reproduce any lender’s eligibility list on this page, and we check your occupation against current policy at the time you apply. Nothing on this page is a representation that a waiver is available to you.
Study loan figures change every income year. The compulsory repayment threshold and rates quoted are the ATO figures for the 2026-27 income year and are stated as at the date shown on this page. Indexation, thresholds and rates are set by government and change. Whether to make voluntary repayments against a study loan is a decision for you and your registered tax agent, and this page does not recommend it either way.
Tax and structure are not ours to advise on. Personal services income, the PSI rules, service entity arrangements, partnership distributions and how any of them should be structured are matters for a registered tax agent and the Australian Taxation Office. We describe how these things tend to be read by credit assessors, which is a lending observation and not tax advice. We are not registered tax agents.
Nothing here is a guarantee. Loan approval, borrowing capacity, interest rates, loan to value ratios, waiver eligibility, timeframes and how partnership, contractor or entity income is assessed are determined by individual lenders and government bodies, not by us. They differ between lenders and change over time. Any figure or timeframe on this page is indicative and is not a quote, an offer, or a prediction of your outcome.
Best Interests Duty. A loan for a home you will live in, or for the purchase or improvement of residential investment property, is regulated consumer credit under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009, whatever your occupation or income. When providing credit assistance in relation to these products, Intellect Finance is required to act in your best interests and, where there is a conflict of interest, to give priority to your interests. These obligations have applied to mortgage brokers since 1 January 2021.
How we are paid. Intellect Finance does not charge borrowers a fee for arranging finance, and does not charge a clawback fee where a loan is discharged early. Lenders pay us a commission on settlement. The basis of that commission is disclosed to you in writing in our Credit Guide before any credit assistance is provided.
Third-party information. Where this page refers to regulatory settings, tax thresholds, consumer guidance or lender policy, that information is sourced from the relevant authority and was correct to the best of our knowledge at the date shown on this page. Those rules change, sometimes without notice. Always confirm the current position with the issuing authority, with a licensed adviser or with us before relying on it.
Found something wrong? If you believe anything on this page is inaccurate or out of date, tell us at joe@intellectfinance.com.au and we will review and correct it.
Intellect Finance Pty Ltd | Australian Credit Licence 390611 | MFAA Member | AFCA Member