Private and Trust-Based Lending Solutions
Finance that respects your structure.
When your borrowing needs involve private arrangements, family trusts, discretionary trusts, or complex ownership structures, Oakwood Finance arranges finance structured around your goals and the entities you already hold. Our approach is discreet, strategic, and grounded in clarity – ideal for clients who value control and confidentiality.
What we do on a trust or private funding file
When a trust is borrowing
We compare lenders that are comfortable with your type of trust, and we work with your solicitor and accountant so that the paperwork and the application reach the lender together.
When you need private funding
We start by asking how the loan will be repaid and by when, because the exit decides what is arranged, and we compare private funding with the alternatives before you commit.
In each case the lender makes the decision, on its own assessment. To talk it through, book a time with a broker or contact us.
Why a trust or private funding comes up
Some borrowers hold property in a trust. Your accountant and lawyer advise on whether that suits you and on the tax and legal position, and we arrange the finance around the structure they have settled on.
Private lenders assess a loan differently from banks, often looking closely at the security and the exit rather than relying on a standard income template. The cost is normally higher, so private funding suits a defined purpose and a clear exit rather than long-term borrowing.
Whether a loan suits a trust, and which lender will consider it, depends on the trust deed, the people behind it and the lender’s current policy.
Borrowing through a trust
Trusts are ordinary in Australian business and estate planning, and awkward in lending. The asset protection and distribution flexibility that make a trust useful are precisely the features that make a credit team cautious, because the borrower is a structure rather than a person.
What the lender needs to establish
Who actually controls it. The trustee, the appointor, and whether the trustee is a person or a company. The appointor can usually replace the trustee, so lenders treat that role as control regardless of what the trustee deed says day to day.
Whether the deed permits the borrowing. Not every deed does, and not every deed allows the trustee to act as guarantor or to mortgage trust assets. This gets read properly, and a deed that does not permit it needs a variation before anything can proceed.
Who stands behind it. Often personal guarantor support from the controllers and, where the trustee is a company, from its directors, depending on the lender. A trust can find it hard to borrow without someone personally on the hook, which surprises people who set the trust up specifically for protection.
Discretionary, unit and hybrid
A discretionary (family) trust distributes at the trustee’s discretion, which is flexible for tax and unhelpful for a lender trying to establish reliable income to a particular person. A unit trust has fixed proportional entitlements, which lenders generally find easier. Hybrid structures combine both and are assessed on their specific terms. Some lenders may decline them rather than read the deed.
For SMSF borrowing, a bare trust is a different thing again: see SMSF lending.
Where it goes wrong
Usually paperwork. A deed that cannot be located, unstamped where the state requires stamping, a trustee company whose ASIC record does not match the deed, or distributions in the accounts that do not match the entitlements in the deed. Each of these can usually be fixed, and each can add delay if it surfaces at assessment rather than beforehand. We ask for the deed at the start for exactly this reason.
An illustrative worked example
An illustrative example of how a file like this can be approached. It is not a client outcome, and no result is implied. This is general information only, not credit assistance, a quote or a recommendation. Every structure depends on individual circumstances, lender credit policy and approval. Oakwood arranges credit through its lending partners; all lending is subject to lender assessment and approval.
Worked example · Family trust buying an investment property
Checking that the deed permits the borrowing
Structure to consider: a discretionary trust with a corporate trustee
The situation. A family wants their discretionary trust to buy an investment property. The trust has existed for some time and holds other assets.
The complication. On reading the deed, it may not clearly empower the trustee to borrow or to mortgage trust property, which can be a feature of older deeds drafted before this was routine. Separately, the trustee company’s ASIC record may still list a former director who resigned some time ago without the record being updated. Either issue could stop a file at assessment.
What we would look at. Reading the deed first and flagging both points before anything is lodged. If the deed does not clearly permit the borrowing, the family’s solicitor would advise on a deed of variation adding the borrowing power, and an out-of-date ASIC record would be corrected. Only then would the file go to a lender comfortable with discretionary trusts and corporate trustees, with the deed, any variation and the guarantor arrangements set out up front.
What the example shows. A deed that is silent on borrowing is a drafting question for the family’s solicitor, and it can be easier to settle that before the file reaches a lender than to answer a credit assessor’s questions about it. Whether a lender will accept a particular trust structure is for that lender to decide.
Before you lodge
The guide covers what a lender has to establish about the deed, the trustee and the appointor, how discretionary, unit and hybrid trusts are treated differently, and the paperwork that delays these files.