Medical and Healthcare Finance Broker for Doctors, Dentists, Veterinarians and Allied Health Professionals

A healthcare income rarely looks like a standard payslip. It can arrive through hospital contracts that change with each rotation, through locum or sessional work, or through a practice, company, trust or service entity, and lenders read each of those arrangements differently.

Some lenders have policies for eligible medical professionals. A policy of that kind may include lenders mortgage insurance (LMI) waivers or lower deposit requirements, subject to eligibility, the lender's policy and your circumstances. Whether a lender has one, who it covers and what it offers vary between lenders, and a lender can change it. Nothing on this page means that a particular policy applies to you. This is where we do the homework: we work out which lender policies, if any, might suit your profession and stage of career, confirm each lender's current terms before you rely on them, and the lender decides whether you are eligible and whether to approve the loan.

We arrange home loans for first home buyers, next home buyers, investors and people refinancing, and we treat the home loan as part of the wider picture if a practice or equipment facility is planned. For career-stage detail and what to have ready, see the career-stage section below. For how LMI works and the questions to ask first, see health professionals and LMI.

Your borrowing requirements can change significantly across a medical career. Early on, as an intern, registrar or newly registered dentist, veterinarian or psychologist, the priority is often a first home while managing study debt and establishing income.

Later, the focus commonly shifts towards:

• Investment property
• Practice ownership and partnership buy-ins
• Commercial premises
• Equipment, fit-out and vehicles
• Working capital and cash-flow facilities
• SMSF structures and healthcare property
• Practice expansion and business acquisition

Rather than treating each transaction independently, we consider how today’s lending decisions may affect tomorrow’s opportunities, so that the structure you put in place now is less likely to limit what comes next.

Lenders generally assess a practice as a business, so the quality of the file matters. A purchase is commonly assessed on the practice as well as on you: patient retention, how much of the billing belongs to the departing principal, the lease on the rooms and the goodwill component. Working capital and overdrafts are commonly assessed on cash flow.

We assist medical, dental, veterinary and allied health practices with:

• Practice acquisitions, buy-ins and franchise entry
• Practice establishment and new locations
• Working capital and overdraft facilities
• Commercial premises, including rooms held in an SMSF
• Debt consolidation and commercial refinancing
• Group structures across companies, trusts and property

The same things usually slow these files down: out-of-date financials, an undisclosed ATO position and service entity income without the accountant’s explanation. All three are solvable in advance, so we prepare the file before it reaches a lender. See also our commercial finance page.

Day hospitals, specialist centres and healthcare developments often require several forms of funding to work together. A single project may involve:

• Commercial property, whether purchased, built or refurbished
• Construction or development finance drawn in stages against progress
• Healthcare operations and working capital through the build period
• Specialised medical and theatre equipment
• Existing debt, multiple entities and trusts, and future expansion

Private hospitals, specialist centres and group practices raise the same questions at a different scale, and the same approach applies.

Oakwood Finance has experience structuring finance for significant healthcare facilities involving complex group structures and substantial aggregate lending exposure, including facilities extending into tens of millions of dollars across commercial property, hospital operations, specialised equipment and working capital.

For projects of this scale, we work alongside your accountants, legal advisers, consultants, valuers and banking teams to help coordinate the finance process, drawing on our development and construction experience where a facility is being built rather than bought.

Scenario 01 · Day hospital

Different funding needs, presented as one plan

Purpose Building works, fit-out, equipment and working capital · Structure Separate facilities, each on its own term

The situation. An established day hospital is considering an expansion: building works, a full clinical fit-out, theatre and consulting equipment, and working capital to trade through the construction period.

The complication. Those needs have different funding profiles. Construction draws down in stages against progress. Equipment is asset-backed. Fit-out largely is not. Working capital is assessed on cash flow. Bundled into one application it reads as an oversized ask; split into unrelated ones, no lender ever sees the plan that makes it make sense.

What we would look at. How each component could be matched to its own repayment profile, and how the whole plan, including the practice’s forecasts, could be presented to a lender as one coordinated package rather than fragments. We would work alongside the practice’s accountant, the builder and the fit-out designers so that the drawdown schedule tracked the construction program and equipment arrived as rooms became ready, instead of sitting funded and idle.

The outcome. In a case like this, a lender may consider a package of separate facilities: a longer term against the premises, a construction facility that draws down against progress, an equipment facility on a term matched to the working life of the equipment, and a working capital line assessed on cash flow. The premises component may settle first, with the construction and equipment facilities established as the build begins.

Scenario 02 · Dental franchise

Buying into a franchise, with the exit mapped before the entry

Purpose Goodwill, equipment, fit-out and working capital · Structure Secured and unsecured components on different terms

The situation. An established practitioner is considering buying into a dental franchise group: goodwill, equipment, fit-out and working capital in a single transaction.

The complication. Franchise agreements carry terms that directly affect finance and are easy to skim past. How goodwill is valued on exit, whether the franchisor holds first right of refusal, what happens to the fit-out if the agreement ends, how the practice can be sold and to whom. Those clauses shape the security position, and lenders price for them.

What we would look at. Bringing the practitioner’s lawyer and accountant in before the finance is structured rather than after: the lawyer reviews the franchise terms, the accountant models both the entry and the eventual exit. We would then arrange the finance around what that review shows, so the term and structure match a realistic holding period instead of just getting the purchase across the line.

The outcome. In a case like this, a lender may consider a package structured across goodwill, equipment and working capital rather than a single facility, with a secured component on a longer term and an unsecured component on a shorter one, and the practitioner understands the exit position before signing rather than discovering it later.

Illustrative examples: representative scenarios of a kind we see in this market, not specific clients. Every application is assessed by the lender on its own facts.