New services dealing with pensions headaches hit the market
Heffron SMSF Solutions has added new features to its actuarial certificate service to assist SMSF professionals with the changes to exempt current pension income.
Heffron will launch a new tool next week, the actuarial certificate wizard, which includes a live chat allowing users to ask for help immediately and new calculation methodology.
For SMSF returns for 2017–18 and onwards, Heffron explained that the wizard explicitly excludes pension accounts from the actuarial calculation during periods when the fund is deemed to be segregated and allows for the fact that transition to retirement income streams are not entitled to ECPI from 2017–18 onwards.
In addition, BGL users will now be able to choose the number of decimal places that they want for the actuarial percentage, which was a feature already available to Class users.
Class users will be able to access certificates immediately where they pass a range of tests behind the scenes, which is a feature already available to BGL users.
Heffron said users will not need to identify any periods of deemed segregation as Class and BGL will work this out from the data and send that information to Heffron.
Commenting on the launch, Heffron head of customer Meg Heffron said raising standards in the financial services industry is core to Heffron's purpose and this as an important step in that direction.
"The window for responding to the new certificate standards required us to use an agile best-practice development approach which we now pride ourselves on," said Ms Heffron.
"The launch of the new actuarial certificate service is one of a number of innovations Heffron is delivering to its customers; Innovations such as a new online training facility, an integrated SMSF establishment service with robo-adviser 6Park and a number of improvements to our platform, Maestro, are also in the wings."
You can read the latest on changes to ECPI calculations here.
Miranda Brownlee
Miranda Brownlee is the deputy editor of SMSF Adviser, which is the leading source of news, strategy and educational content for professionals working in the SMSF sector.
Since joining the team in 2014, Miranda has been responsible for breaking some of the biggest superannuation stories in Australia, and has reported extensively on technical strategy and legislative updates.
Miranda also has broad business and financial services reporting experience, having written for titles including Investor Daily, ifa and Accountants Daily.
