Guide / LMI
Lenders Mortgage Insurance can add $20,000, $30,000, sometimes more, to the cost of buying a home. But if you're a doctor, nurse, accountant, lawyer, or the right kind of borrower, you may not have to pay it at all.
Often, yes. If you're a doctor, nurse, accountant, lawyer or another registered professional, most major lenders will waive the premium entirely and still lend you up to 90 or 95% of the property's value.
There's also a fourth route that has nothing to do with your job. Some lenders waive it on the strength of your finances alone, usually on larger loans.
When you buy a home with less than a 20% deposit, the bank charges you a one-off insurance premium. It's called Lenders Mortgage Insurance, or LMI. It protects the bank if you can't repay, not you. But you're the one who pays for it.
On a $2 million home in the Sydney Eastern Suburbs with a 10% deposit, that bill is typically somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000. On larger loans, it goes higher still.
An LMI waiver means the bank agrees to waive that charge entirely. You still borrow with a small deposit. You just don't pay the premium.
A GP buys a home in Bronte for $2.2M with a 10% deposit. Without a waiver, LMI would add around $38,000 to her costs. With a medico waiver, it's zero, and she can borrow up to 95% if she wants to keep more cash in hand.
There are four main groups. If you're in one of them, there's a good chance you don't have to pay LMI at all.
This is the most straightforward group. If you're a GP, surgeon, dentist, anaesthetist, psychiatrist, radiologist, obstetrician, or practically any other registered medical specialist, every major lender has a policy for you. You can typically borrow up to 90–95% of the property's value with no LMI.
You need to be currently registered with AHPRA and actively working in your field. That's it. The waiver applies whether you're working in a public hospital, a private practice, or a mix of both.
And if you're still in training as an intern, resident or registrar, you're covered too. Lenders treat you the same as a fully qualified practitioner.
A cardiologist buys a home in Coogee for $2.5M with a 10% deposit. On a standard loan, the LMI bill would be over $60,000. With a medico waiver, it's zero. She keeps her cash and gets into the home she wants.
This is where it gets important to pick the right lender. Nurses, physiotherapists, psychologists, pharmacists, chiropractors, podiatrists, optometrists, occupational therapists, speech pathologists, radiographers and others in allied health can get an LMI waiver, but not from every lender. Some banks exclude these professions entirely from their waiver programs.
If you're in allied health, you need to be working in your registered field and earning your primary income from it. A minimum income threshold applies at most lenders.
A physiotherapist who owns her own practice earns $190,000 a year and wants to buy in Coogee for $2 million. She has a 12% deposit saved. At the right lender, LMI is waived completely, saving her around $32,000 upfront.
ANZ, CBA, NAB and Westpac all offer LMI waivers for qualified accountants and lawyers. The basics are simple. You need a current professional registration, which means CA, CPA or CFA for accountants and a practising certificate for lawyers. And you need to be earning your income from that profession.
Here's something that surprises a lot of people. You don't need to work at a big firm. A CPA who's the in-house accountant at a construction company qualifies. A lawyer working as legal counsel at a bank qualifies. You just need to be practising, actually doing the work, and registered.
A minimum gross income from your profession typically applies, generally in the range of $100,000–$120,000 per year depending on the lender.
A senior partner at a Sydney law firm earns $450,000. He wants to buy in Clovelly for $5M with a 15% deposit. He qualifies for an LMI waiver, saving roughly $80,000 upfront.
This one is different. Some lenders will waive LMI based purely on your financial profile, not what you do for work. If you have a strong income, solid assets, a clean credit history and no red flags in your finances, you may qualify even if you're a business owner, an executive, or work in an industry that doesn't have a formal professional registration.
This type of waiver typically applies to larger loans, generally above $2 million, and the property usually needs to be in a premium suburb. The lender assesses your application and decides whether the overall risk profile is low enough to justify waiving LMI.
It won't suit everyone, but for the right borrower it's a powerful option, and one that many people don't know exists.
A business owner in Rose Bay wants to buy a $2.5M home. He has a 15% deposit, strong income, no missed payments ever, and a clean credit file. He doesn't have a professional qualification, but a lender assesses him as low risk and waives LMI anyway. He saves around $40,000.
The waiver doesn't mean the first eligible lender is automatically the right one. Different lenders have different rates, features and appetite for your specific situation. The job is to find a lender that both waives LMI and gives you a competitive rate. In most cases, that option exists. A good broker will find it.
Most people don't know they qualify until a broker tells them. Five minutes is usually enough to find out.
If you're weighing up how much deposit you actually need, or you're at the pre-approval stage and want to know what a waiver does to your budget, that's worth a conversation first.
With a 10% deposit, typically somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000. It climbs steeply from there on larger loans, so on a $2.5 million purchase with the same deposit you can be looking at $60,000 or more. It's charged once, at settlement, and it protects the bank rather than you.
No. What matters is that you're registered and actually practising, not who employs you. A CPA working in-house at a construction company qualifies. So does a lawyer working as legal counsel at a bank. Most lenders also set a minimum income from the profession, generally in the range of $100,000 to $120,000.
Yes. Interns, residents and registrars are treated the same as fully qualified practitioners, which catches a lot of people by surprise. You need to be currently registered and working in your field. It's one of the few places in lending where being early in your career costs you nothing.
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Assumptions and sources. LMI premium ranges are indicative for Sydney Eastern Suburbs purchases as at August 2026 and vary by lender, insurer, deposit size and property type. Waiver policies for medical, allied health, accounting and legal professions are current published lender policy at ANZ, CBA, NAB and Westpac as at August 2026, and each lender sets its own eligible occupation list, minimum income and maximum loan to value ratio. Registration requirements refer to current registration with the relevant national board or professional body. General information only, and not a recommendation about any credit product. Your own eligibility depends on your full circumstances and the lender's assessment at the time you apply.
Shane checks eligibility across all four major lenders at no cost to you. Most people know within one conversation whether a waiver is on the table, and how much it saves. $0 brokerage fee either way.
Shane specialises in helping clients across Coogee, Clovelly, Bronte, Bondi, and all surrounding Eastern Suburbs.