It’s been fair to say that the past 18 months have been hectic – sure, our clients have been impacted substantially by the super reforms, but at a practice-level, these changes have arguably been as profound (maybe more) for you as a practitioner. Adjustments for the introduction of the transfer balance cap (TBC), regular reporting requirements (TBAR), and total super balance are just some of the challenges that now confront you as SMSF professionals. It was because of these substantial changes today and into the future from a legislative, regulatory and technology perspective, we decided to revisit our Future of SMSF survey and report in 2018.
A bold target of 500 participants was set to complete this year’s survey (our highest was 437 in our inaugural report in 2014). To help shape a smarter SMSF future, the survey needed to be more comprehensive than ever before, making sure it probed the right questions and dug deep enough to identify issues, roadblocks and opportunities for practitioners. We lent on industry colleagues, experts within their field to help shape the right questions to ensure that we were going to create a meaningful final report, something which we think we’ve achieved.
Most importantly though as the survey closes this week, Friday, 17 August we are approaching 500 participants. To those that have participated, a big thank-you for your support… For those that haven’t we would like to encourage you to take the time to fill out the survey before it closes.
Taking a ‘helicopter view’ of the survey results to date, we can already see some fascinating insights as to how practices have taken on board technology, the levels of growth, challenges ahead post super reforms and much more.
- Here’s just a few things we’ve seen from the survey so far…
- 80% of respondents are accountants
- 56% are partner/director/principals in the business
- We can see that SMSF specialisation in practices is growing – that is, more businesses setting up specialist divisions or stand-alone businesses.
- We can see the evolution of cloud is in full swing, but some significant challenges are confronting practitioners with their SMSF business model; and
- Most practitioners remain buoyant about the sector, looking to growth and new opportunities for their SMSF business.
As we start to analyse the data from next week, we will be breaking down the data into various segments, including:
- Specialists vs. generalists; and
- by practice size (e.g. under $500k, $1.0m – $2.0m, $5.0 – $7.5m in fees)
We expect to gain some valuable insights from this analysis which will help to understand the time frames required for implementation of a modern SMSF business model within a practice that includes revisiting pricing, resource capability, use of technology and much more.
Follow our page https://smartersmsf.com/futureofsmsf to keep up to date with everything Future of SMSF related.
If you have any other questions about the Future of SMSF survey or report in the meantime, please do not hesitate to get in contact with us on 1300 95 94 76 or email team@smartersmsf.com
Thanks again for helping to shape a smarter SMSF future.
