Overtime, Locum & Medicare Billings: How to Make Your Full Medical Income Count
You earn well. So why does the bank’s calculator say you can borrow so much less than you expected? For medical professionals, the answer usually isn’t your income — it’s how the lender chooses to read it. Get that wrong and you can lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in borrowing capacity on paper alone.
Why standard banks ‘shade’ your income
A retail branch runs your file through an automated system built for a salaried nine-to-five worker. When it sees overtime, shift penalties, on-call allowances, locum contracts or Medicare billings, it often discounts or ‘shades’ that income — counting only 80% of it, or excluding it entirely. For a hospital doctor whose after-hours and on-call work is a permanent, reliable part of their pay, that’s a serious and unnecessary penalty.
How the right lender reads it instead
Specialist medical lending policies take a different view. The lenders I work with will, in the right circumstances, count 100% of:
- Hospital overtime and shift penalties
- On-call and other allowances
- Locum contract income
- Private practice dividends and Medicare billings
The impact is not marginal. Consider two registrars with identical base salaries:
| Income treatment | Standard bank | Specialist lender |
|---|---|---|
| Base salary counted | 100% | 100% |
| Overtime / penalties | Shaded to 80% | Counted 100% |
| Locum income | Often excluded | Counted |
| Assessed income | Lower | True earnings |
Same doctor, same payslips — a materially different borrowing capacity, purely because of lender policy.
How to present your income properly
Maximising what counts is partly about lender choice and partly about packaging. Consistent evidence of your variable income — payslips showing regular overtime, a history of locum contracts, or business financials for private billings — lets a lender treat it as dependable rather than one-off. A broker who understands medical rosters and billing structures can frame this the way a credit assessor needs to see it.
The goal is simple: your borrowing capacity should reflect what you actually earn, not a watered-down version of it.
Not sure your full income is being counted? Book a strategy session and I’ll assess your true borrowing capacity across our panel of lenders. Book a meeting with Coin Capital.
General Advice Warning: This information is general in nature and does not constitute personal financial advice. LMI waivers, interest rates, loan features and approval timeframes are subject to individual lender credit criteria, AHPRA registration verification, minimum income thresholds and policy requirements, which may change without notice. Savings examples are illustrative only. Coin Capital Pty Ltd (ABN 90 674 941 229, Australian Credit Representative 501473) is a credit representative of Connective Credit Services Pty Ltd (Australian Credit Licence 389328).