What documents does a lender ask for?
A refinance asks for less than a purchase did, because the structure already exists and nobody is creating a new borrowing arrangement. The common core across the panel:
- The SMSF trust deed, including any amendments. Lenders check that the deed actually permits borrowing.
- The bare trust or holding trust deed, the document naming the trustee that holds the property while the loan runs.
- The corporate trustee’s company documents, where there is one: certificate of registration, constitution, ASIC details.
- Six to twelve months of loan statements on the loan being refinanced. This is the document that does the most work on an express application.
- Recent fund financials and the SMSF annual return, on a standard assessment.
- Rental evidence: the lease or a rental statement, and on commercial the full lease matters a great deal.
- Identification for every member and every director of the trustee company, usually certified.
What do the express lanes skip?
Where the last 6 to 12 months of repayments have been on time, the express pathways drop a meaningful amount of this:
- No income documents. No member payslips, no personal tax returns.
- Often no fund financials. Some lenders run the assessment without the SMSF annual return at all.
- No fresh serviceability calculation. The repayment record substitutes for it, provided the new repayment is no higher than the current one.
- Frequently, no new legal advice. Several lenders accept the advice already given on the original arrangement, which removes both a cost and a delay.
What never gets skipped is the deed pair. The trust deed and the bare trust deed are checked on every application, because they are what establish that the borrowing is permitted and that the security is held correctly.
What slows applications down?
Rarely the credit assessment. In practice it is almost always paperwork, and usually the same few items:
- The bare trust deed nobody can find. It was executed once, years ago, and often sits with the accountant or the original solicitor rather than the trustee. It is worth locating before anything else.
- An unstamped or unexecuted deed. Missing signatures, missing dates, or stamping never completed. Fixing this after the fact takes time and sometimes a lawyer.
- Deed amendments that were never documented. Trustee changes and member changes that happened in practice but were not papered.
- Certification. Identification documents certified by someone outside the accepted list, or certified too long ago.
- Discharge from the outgoing lender. This sits outside your broker’s control and is frequently the longest single step, particularly with a lender that has wound back its SMSF operations.
What is worth doing before you start?
Three things, in this order, none of which need a lender involved:
- Find the deeds. Trust deed, bare trust deed, and any amendments. Confirm they are signed, dated and stamped. This is the step that most often adds weeks later.
- Read the exit terms on your current loan. Discharge fee, and whether an early-repayment fee still applies. Many deadline-era loans carry one for the first two or three years, and it belongs in the break-even maths rather than in a settlement statement surprise.
- Check the last twelve months of repayments. A clean record is what opens the lightest-paperwork lanes, and you can establish that from your own statements in a couple of minutes.
The switching-cost guide walks through how those exit terms feed into the break-even month.
Work out whether it is worth the paperwork
The calculator puts the switching costs next to the saving before it shows you a figure.