The full answer
What actually decides it.
Yes. One year is enough for a smaller group of lenders, and being turned down by your own bank on this is common enough that it should not be taken as an answer about the whole market.
The obstacle is that most lenders want two years of finalised figures, so they can see a direction of travel rather than a single number. With one year there is no direction of travel, so a lender that will still lend needs something else to work from. That something is usually your accountant.
What those lenders accept is a projection. Your accountant takes your year-to-date profit and projects the current year forward, and that sits alongside your one completed year to give the lender its second reference point. Some lenders write to your accountant directly with their own list of requirements. Others have a pro forma the accountant completes and returns through us. Either way it is a short piece of work for them rather than a rebuild of your accounts.
A well-chosen accountant matters more here than at any other stage. One who works with dental professionals will have done this before, will recognise what the lender is asking for and will turn it round quickly. One who has not will sometimes decline to provide a projection at all, and that removes the lender, not the accountant.
The practical point is timing. If you know you want to buy in your second year of self-employment, say so to your accountant now rather than in the week the application goes in.
Where lenders differ
- The first split is whether one year is enough at all. Most lenders want two. A smaller group will work from one, and that group is where an application like yours belongs.
- Among the lenders that do accept one year, they differ on how the accountant’s projection reaches them. Some write to your accountant with their own requirements. Others supply a pro forma to be completed and submitted through your broker.
- They differ again on what has to support the projection. Some want evidence of contracted treatment volumes over a year alongside it; others are satisfied with the accounts and the accountant’s figures.
Two newly self-employed dentists came to us with one year of accounts, having been turned down by their own bank. We placed them with a lender that works from an accountant’s projection. Their accountant specialised in dental professionals and was able to project both incomes forward, which was enough for them to borrow what they needed.
Anonymised, and supplied by Wallace Home Finance. One client’s circumstances, not a guide to what yours would be.
Written from Colin Wallace’s typed answers of 24 August 2026 and reviewed by Colin Wallace.