For Jo Hurley, SMSFs are a personal crusade

“My father was self-employed and never thought to pay himself super, and my mother fell in the gaps as a casual teacher with big gaps in her work history. When my grandparents retired in the 80s, it was at the time of the stock market crash and they lost nearly everything. When I found myself working in super very early in my working career, it was these early life experiences that helped me immediately connect with what SMSF was all about.

“The sector tugged at my heart strings straight away because I could see from what happened with my own family that having a self-managed fund meant more control and more choice.”

With statistics showing that more younger women are now establishing SMSF than any other demographic, Ms Hurley is a perfect role model for what it offers.

“I have been in SMSF since the mid-90s. I started at Deloitte in their superannuation audit division fresh out of high school, so I’ve grown up with the SMSF industry,” she said.

“It was so new back then. There was a stage early in my career when I became a chartered accountant that I felt this passion and draw to SMSF and I felt that I could contribute to new areas of specialisation. I could see a lot of potential.”

Ms Hurley started her own SMSF at just 24, and not long after, used her newly gained SMSF qualifications and experience to establish an independent SMSF audit practice aimed specifically at accounting firms dealing with SMSFs.

In 2005 she started Engage, a genuine specialist independent audit firm, with the vision of helping more SMSF Trustees to benefit from a high quality independent audit.

“The more funds I could audit, the more I could ensure they got more independent feedback” she said.

“Audit is the only compulsory annual service in SMSF and in that way, I felt it gave me the opportunity to reach more Trustees and really maximise my impact.”

She started with a single client and 10 years later was providing audits for more than 200 accounting firms and her firm was one of the largest SMSF audit providers in the country.

In 2015, her former employer Deloitte bought the business and over the next three years Ms Hurley partnered with the global company and doubled the business to 20,000 audits.

A year ago, Ms Hurley took the next step in her SMSF career: taking up the position as general manager of growth at Class.

“SMSF moved into the cloud thanks to Class, and I have always held great respect for the business and its founders. The technology really changed the game for SMSF compliance and administration, and the greatest beneficiary of that was SMSF members,” she said.

“Class actually launched into the SMSF market around the same time I was starting to gain momentum with Engage, and the way Class was built really inspired me to begin working on the idea of a highly automated audit and the vision of bringing the audit process closer to real time.

“Rather than a Trustee making a decision today and having to wait months and potentially even years to find out that something wasn’t right, I liked the idea that an auditor could become more timely and relevant with better visibility of transactions on a more continual basis.

“It’s fair to say Class helped me to be able to scale my audit business, enabling me to audit a greater number of funds while ensuring the quality was always improving.”

Jo continues to be a passionate advocate for the benefits of technology in the SMSF sector, particularly as younger members lead the charge in establishing new SMSFs and seek greater access to current information about how their fund is performing and how much they have in their SMSF member account at any given time.

She is also keen to see even closer collaboration with auditors to ensure the adoption of new technology continues to deliver a reduction in risk and increase in efficiency for both Class users and the auditors they partner with.

“One of the approaches Class is taking is to continue investing in high quality data feeds that Class clients and their auditors can rely on thanks to the ASAE 3402 assurance reports Class obtains,” she said.

“Technology is making it easier and more cost effective to establish an SMSF. As we look to continue to grow our business, our ecosystem, and to also support the growth of the SMSF sector as a whole, it’s important that we continue to listen and engage with our clients and deliver innovation that matters.