Mary Simmons, head of technical for the SMSF Association, told SMSF Adviser that although changing rules and technical complexity will be top of mind in 2026, a lot of issues facing the industry arise from the way in which people behave.
“It’s not just technical complexities that shape our sector, but also the real issues that practitioners face,” Simmons said.
“It’s all about how people behave. That’s what we refer to as that real human complexity that we need to acknowledge and address which we will be doing at the national conference in February.”
Simmons continued that from a demographic perspective, the SMSF sector now has new needs and risks and is dealing with more cohorts now than in the past.
“We’ve got a lot of the older, wealthier SMSF members that are really diverse in their needs, and a lot of what they have to deal with is quite complex, especially if they’re dealing with a lot of grandfathered technical rules, because there’s been a lot of law changes over the years,” she said.
“The other cohort are the younger trustees establishing SMSFs and they’ve definitely got new needs. They are doing a lot of it all on their own, informing themselves along the way, and not seeking advice until they hit milestones. They’re also more risk averse and will look at alternative investments, like digital assets, for example. You can see how some of these demographic shifts are going to reshape the advice, the administration and the whole audit process, especially as there is more reliance on online.”
Furthermore, Simmons said, at the heart of human complexity is family dynamics, and capacity concerns.
“We’ve got emotional decision making and disputes. These are all the things that we will look at during the national conference. For example, we will definitely take a close look at relationship breakdowns, because you find that many funds are not designed with separation in mind until it’s way too late. We will unpack not just the legal issues but the real, practical realities. How do you split balances? How do you value assets? What actually happens inside the fund, and that chain reaction it creates for the adviser, the accountant and the auditor when there’s a breakdown,” she said.
“From a behavioral perspective, you see some interesting family dynamics come out on the death of a trustee and that gives rise to quite a bit of trustee risk, in the sense that you might have invalid nominations, documentation, successor trustee problems, outdated estate plans. Blended families come into play with disputes between adult children. These are just some of those practical realities.”
