Why Banks Get Vet Income Wrong (And What It Costs You)

If you have ever sat across from a bank lender and watched them stare blankly at your payslips, you are not imagining it. Banks are built for simple salaries. Your income is anything but simple.

Most veterinarians earn their income in ways that standard bank assessment tools were never designed to handle. Mixed locum and salaried shifts. Clinic distributions. HECS repayments chewing into your take-home. Overtime that is real and recurring but gets dismissed. The result? Banks regularly underestimate what vets can actually borrow, or worse, decline applications that should have sailed through.

This article explains exactly where banks go wrong, why it happens, and what it means for your borrowing power.

The Problem: Banks Use One Template for Everyone

Most lenders use automated serviceability calculators. These tools are built around the most common borrower: someone with a single employer, a consistent fortnightly salary, and no professional complexity. They work fine for that person.

You are not that person.

A vet working a mix of locum shifts and part-time clinic employment might have three or four different income streams in a single tax return. An automated system sees that and flags it as risk. It does not see a highly skilled professional with strong earning capacity and real job security. It sees complexity, and complexity triggers caution.

Two vets with identical incomes can be quoted $100,000 apart in borrowing capacity by different lenders, simply because of how each one assesses locum income, HECS debt, and overtime loadings. That gap is not a negotiation. It is just the difference between going to the right lender and the wrong one.

The Five Ways Banks Misread Vet Income

Here is where the errors tend to happen:

1. Locum income treated as unreliable

Locum work is dismissed by many lenders as casual or irregular income, even when you have been earning it consistently for years. Some lenders will only count 80% of locum earnings, or will average it across two years in a way that punishes you if your income has grown. A lender who understands the vet industry knows that experienced locums are in high demand and their income is as stable as any permanent role.

2. HECS debt over-counted as a liability

Banks are required to factor in HECS repayments when assessing your borrowing capacity, which is fair. What is not fair is how much some lenders inflate the impact. Depending on your income level, HECS repayments can reduce your assessed borrowing capacity by $50,000 to $100,000 more than necessary when a lender uses a blunt assessment approach. Some lenders are significantly more generous in how they treat HECS, and choosing the right one can make a meaningful difference.

3. Overtime and on-call loadings ignored

If you regularly work on-call shifts or receive overtime pay, some lenders will exclude that income entirely. Others will include it if you can demonstrate it is regular and ongoing. For a vet earning $10,000 to $20,000 a year in overtime and loadings, this distinction alone can change your borrowing capacity by $100,000 or more.

4. Clinic distributions assessed as irregular

Vets who hold equity in a practice often receive distributions or trust income. Banks that do not understand professional service businesses treat this income inconsistently, sometimes requiring two years of tax returns and then averaging in a way that does not reflect your actual ongoing earnings. Some lenders have specific policies for professional equity holders that produce a much more accurate and favourable result.

5. Not knowing about the LMI waiver

This one is not so much an income assessment error as a missed opportunity. Several lenders will waive Lenders Mortgage Insurance (LMI) for veterinarians borrowing up to 90% of the property value. LMI on a $700,000 loan at 90% LVR can run to $15,000 or more. Many vets pay it simply because nobody told them they did not have to. A broker who knows the market will make sure you are not one of them.

Our Story: Why We Get This Right

My wife Shelley is a vet. We owned a clinic together, grew it from a small team to over 20 staff, and lived every one of the income complexities described above. Mixed income streams, irregular distributions, HECS repayments that followed us for years.

When we went through our own property journey, we experienced firsthand what it feels like when a lender does not understand your world. We also discovered what it feels like when one does. The difference in outcome was significant.

That experience is the reason Solid Foundations exists. We understand vet income not because we read about it, but because we have lived it. We know which lenders assess locum income fairly. We know which ones have LMI waivers for vets. And we know how to present a complex income structure in a way that gets the result you deserve.

What This Means for You

If you have been assessed by your bank and accepted the number they gave you, it is worth a second opinion. The gap between what a standard bank assessment produces and what a specialist broker can achieve for a vet is often significant.

Common outcomes we see when vets move from a standard bank assessment to a properly structured application:

• Borrowing capacity increases of $100,000 to $250,000

• LMI costs of $10,000 to $20,000 avoided entirely

• Interest rates 0.3% to 0.6% lower than the branch rate offered

• Applications approved that a standard lender had declined

None of this requires you to earn more or have a perfect financial situation. It requires the right lender, the right loan structure, and someone who knows how to present your application correctly.

Ready to find out what you could actually borrow?

Book a free discovery call. No obligation, no jargon, just a straight conversation about your situation and what is possible.

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