How far back do lenders want my accounts?

Two years, for most lenders. That is the standard, and if you have two years of finalised accounts you will have the widest choice available to you.

Some will ask for three. That tends to depend on the trajectory of the business rather than on the lender being stricter across the board – where the figures move around, a third year gives them the context to understand why.

And some will lend on one. That group is smaller, but it exists, and it is specifically there for the situation of having just finished training and completed a first year as a limited company or a sole trader. One year is not a disqualification; it narrows the field.

The number of years is only half of it. What a lender does with them is the part that changes your borrowing figure. Most will average across two years where two exist, which means an early low year pulls down a later high one. Others will work from the most recent year alone. For a dentist whose income is climbing – which is the normal shape of the first few years – those two approaches produce very different answers from identical accounts.

The practical consequence is that the point at which you apply matters. If a second set of accounts is weeks away and it is a much stronger year, waiting can be worth more than anything else you could do in the meantime. That is a conversation worth having before you start looking rather than after an offer has been made.