Lending planning for the self-employed
Your accountant has a plan for your tax. Who's planning your borrowing?
You're self-employed: your income is structured, your borrowing won't stop at one loan, and a bank's algorithm can't read either. We plan your lending the way your accountant plans your tax, with you, across years, so each loan sets up the next.
Book a Free Strategy SessionA licensed broker · works with your accountant · no obligation
The self-employed catch
The problem isn't your income. It's how a bank reads it.
Your accountant did exactly their job: legally lower your taxable income. The catch is that a bank's serviceability model reads the same return and sees a borrower who earns less than they really do. Most lenders never look past the headline number.
What the algorithm sees
- A low taxable income after deductions
- Variable earnings it labels unstable
- Company loans, including Division 7A, and trust distributions it reads as red flags
- Add-backs ignored, so your capacity looks smaller than it is
- One lender's decline, taken as the whole market's answer
What's actually true
- A profitable business with income structured down on purpose
- Earnings that have held up across years, not months
- Money that's there, just not flowing the way a rigid lender expects
- Add-backs and other levers that lift your real, serviceable capacity
- The right lender on our panel, where your structure makes sense
Self-employed borrowers are more likely to be knocked back than employees, even on a strong and genuine income, and they often need to borrow more. The difference usually isn't what you earn. It's whether a lender reads your real position, or just the headline number on your tax return.
Reflects how mainstream lenders assess self-employed income. Every situation is assessed on its own.
And there's a deeper gap: every time you borrow, you start this fight from scratch. No plan, just another application.
The shift
Stop applying for loans. Start planning your lending.
You wouldn't do your tax once, in a panic, with no plan. Yet that's how most self-employed borrowing works: a scramble every time, from scratch, hoping a bank says yes. Lending planning flips it. We sit down with you and your accountant and map your borrowing across the next few years, so your structure works for your loans instead of against them, and each move sets up the one after it.
What a lending plan gives you
Three things a one-off application never will.
We find the levers in your financials
Add-backs, how income flows through your entities, how company loans and distributions are presented. Every situation is assessed on its own and taken to the right lender from 30+. Your borrowing power is often higher than your tax return suggests.
Share once. We build the case.
Share your documents one time. We collate the data and build the narrative the bank needs, so you're not re-explaining yourself at every lender. Most clients just tell us what they want and let us work out how.
This loan sets up the next
The next purchase, the refinance, the investment, often at a higher LVR than a salaried buyer. We plan them with you and your accountant so this loan opens the next move instead of blocking it. After settlement, your loan stays watched.
Who you'll talk to
A licensed broker who plans, not just processes.
You'll work with a licensed credit representative who specialises in lending for business owners, contractors and sole traders, and who's at home with companies, trusts, SMSFs and complex financials. They work alongside your accountant or adviser where it helps.
Good to know
Accountant-friendly
We work with your accountant, not around them
Your accountant keeps doing what they do well. We translate that work into borrowing power, and we're happy to talk to them directly if it helps.
Human first
The AI never decides
Approov's process handles the documents, the updates and the monitoring. A licensed broker makes every call and signs off on the advice.
In your corner
Free to you, and on your side
We're paid by lenders for introducing loans. Under the Best Interests Duty we're legally bound to recommend what's right for you, not what pays us most.
Let's build your lending plan.
Book a Strategy Session. A licensed broker walks you through your structure, your real borrowing capacity, and a plan for the next few years, not just the loan in front of you. Bring your accountant if you like. There's nothing to prepare and no obligation.
A licensed broker, not a call centre · works with your accountant · no obligation