Industry fund to facilitate SMSF wind-ups

“Lots of people’s circumstances change and that means even if it was right for them in the beginning, it may not be the best outcome for them now,” said Ms Lander.

She added that when people first establish SMSFs, they often don’t consider how they will wind them up.

Ms Lander gave an example of a husband starting an SMSF who also puts his wife’s super into the fund.

“If the husband gets sick or dies, the wife is then left with such an entity,” she said. “It is often the person who hasn’t set it up and hasn’t taken that day-to-day interest who is left with these things.”

What often happens in these circumstances, Ms Lander said, is the trustee will simply start going into cash or other managed funds within the SMSF, which is highly inefficient.

“You just don’t need that sort of structure for those kinds of investments,” she said.

Ms Lander previously told SMSF Adviser that trustees are often unaware of their investment returns, and put capital movement aside and only concentrate on dividends when buying shares.

“From the conversations I have had with people with SMSFs, you can see that they are a bit like punters,” Ms Lander said.

“They will tell you about the shares they bought that went up in price, but they don’t tell you about the ones that fell in price [so] when you ask them ‘what did your super fund return last year?’ they actually don’t know.”