Aaron Dunn, chief executive officer of Smarter SMSF, said in the latest SMSF Adviser podcast that the advice industry can’t be broadly opened to accountants to be able to talk about advice as the level of knowledge that may sit within certain cohorts of the industry are not going to be sufficient.
“What’s quite fascinating when you look at the tax agent summary is that around half of the industry – 53 per cent – of tax agents actually lodge less than 10 SMSF returns,” he said.
“We’ve got 630,000 funds, so when we talk about the role that advice might play, and the SMSF Association has been quite forthright in the role that accountants can play, it’s some of this data that I think we need to start to look at and understand.”
Dunn said when auditors were regulated by ASIC there was a line drawn at around 20 audits that were being completed and they didn’t have to go through an examination pathway.
“I think as an industry, it’s not saying that accountants should be opened up to its entirety to be able to provide advice, but there needs to be some sort of structural intersection based upon knowledge competencies,” he said.
“It’s this data that really gives us some impression or understanding as to what that sector looks like. We’re talking about only 0.3 of one per cent that administers more than 500 funds.”
He continued that, looking at it from an auditor point of view, there are around 3,167 auditors and the numbers have been progressively declining over time.
“The distribution of audits that are getting done is up to 50 [for each auditor], but you’re looking at around 64 per cent of those doing audits doing less than 50 funds and around 10.5 per cent auditing more than 250 funds,” he said.
“So we have, of the 3166 auditors, 10 per cent, or about 320 odd, who are doing 74 per cent of the total footprint of our SMSF industry. To me, that then gives some intel to the regulator about how they need to manage the risk within the SMSF professionals as well as how they look at it from a trustee perspective.”
He said, in his opinion, the data highlights that there needs to be a framework that will allow for accountants who are competent enough and can demonstrate that competency to be able to fill the advice gap that currently exists in the SMSF sector.
“That can be demonstrated either through qualification or through examination.”
“That’s the scope of what we’re wanting to resolve here. It’s not getting into insurance and handling client monies and so forth. It fundamentally comes back down to a cohort of practitioners within the industry that have a sufficient level of skill and as long as there is a mechanism within the industry to ensure that the appropriate standards are upheld, then that is what we are fighting for.”
Presently, Dunn said, the “solution is to simply ignore it”, which is not assisting clients who may be looking at retirement planning and need to understand things such as transfer balance caps and contributions.
“Then they are basically not documenting it and therefore it’s a ‘he says, she says’ situation which creates an even bigger problem for the industry.”
Excess capacity is likely a problem for most accounting firms as well. Publicity on AI
taking over the role of accounting means fewer graduates and future staff. Until AI has all the bugs ironed out, if that will ever be possible, reliance on it is fraught with danger. A recent case on Superannuation Contributions has penalised the user for reliance on what AI generated and was proven false.
Having achieved a limited license and found the costs were far greater that the scope of advice possible, I have no intentions of working in the advisory space again.
This is not an area where you can fumble your way through. You are either specifically trained or not. And the revenue, even for those firms with all the tools at their disposal, is just not sufficiently rewarding to warrant the extra training and compliance associated with it.
The government can offer, but don’t bank on a wide take-up.
Whilst I agree data analysis is important to understand the potential for accountants to give superannuation advice, understanding the auditor profile isn’t that data point? We don’t expect (or want) auditors providing advice pro-actively. They are the ATO gatekeepers so where they see an issue, they can help the trustee understand it and even remediate it but it can’t be auditors out there in the front line.
Perhaps this data set helps to understand the industry but it is fairly clear that specialist SMSF administrators dominate the sector as it is a volume thing and specialisation leads to volume etc. Where the system is lacking is simple, sensible, tax led super advice, that is run of the mill for many accountants dealing with a client across their whole balance sheet. We need to bridge the gap between full blown financial advice currently offered and that proposed new adviser category that is fundamentally an APRA fund call centre working off scripts. Accountants shouldn’t try and provide financial advice beyond the tax advantages of contributions and pensions and naturally, the structuring that is required from time to time around the trustee etc. Accountants would need to be prepared to run cashflow modelling if they want to dig deeper into the space and, it is unlikely to be economically rationale for them to extend their reach.