Accountants want to grow their self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF) client base by 35%, according to Investment Trends.
The research house’s latest SMSF accountant report found that while SMSF trustees already comprised 36% of accountants’ total client base, accountants estimated another one-in-eight clients were suitable for an SMSFs, and half of this cohort had expressed an interest in establishing one.
Investment Trends senior analyst, King Loong Choi, said: “Given the large pool of potential SMSFs, there is a clear opportunity for service providers to help accountants better serve this segment.
“To help educate clients and facilitate SMSF set up, accountants want to be better equipped to explain the suitability of SMSFs (52%), and the roles and responsibilities of trustees (49%).”
The report noted that the top challenges for accountants were regulatory related such as licensing restrictions on providing financial advice (49%), heightened regulation in setting up SMSFs (34%), and compliance obligations (31%).
“However, many accountants also face issues on the client-facing side, such as competitive pricing/fee recovery (38%) and attracting new SMSF clients (29%),” Choi said.
The report also found that BGL Simple Fund led satisfaction ratings for specialist software used to service SMSFs by accountants as 35% of accountants rated it as ‘very good’, ahead of Class Super (29%), and SuperMate (17%).
