The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has released its annual self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF) data showing the industry has grown by 4% to almost 600,000 funds in the 2020-21 financial year.
Meanwhile, total assets jumped about $80 billion to $820 billion, increasing by 11%.
The annual returns statistics for 2019-20 (which included some data from 2020–21 registrations, wind-ups and auditor contravention reports) showed total SMSF members had grown to 1.1 million by the end of the 2021 financial year, with 25,000 new registrations and approximately 15,900 windups.
Overall, utilising ATO and Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) data, SMSFs held about a quarter of the $3.3 trillion in total super assets in Australia.
The estimated return on assets according to the 2019-20 reports increased by 0.7% showing SMSFs had achieved positive results for the past five years.
Pointing to COVID-19, the proportion of SMSFs recording a zero or negative return on assets (ROA) plummeted to 61% in 2019-20. Looking back, the proportion of zero or negative ROA in 2015-16 was 48% while in 2018-19 it was 26%.
On the flip side, the proportion of funds with an ROA of greater than 5% increased from 18% in 2015–16 to 46% in 2018–19, then dropped to 16% in 2019–20.
Looking at demographics, while the median age for all SMSF members was 61 years as at 30 June, 2021, the median age of newly-established funds, as extrapolated from 2019-20 lodgement data, was 46 years.
The 2019-20 annual returns also showed 40% of SMSF members were in retirement phase while the average taxable income of all members was $116,000 and the median was $65,000.
The average SMSF member balance was $696,000, up 1% from 2018–19, and the median SMSF member balance was $415,000, up 3% from 2018–19.
Women’s average balance also moved up by 1% from 2018-19 to $644,000 while men’s balances fell 1% from 2018-19 to $768,000.
About four in 10 SMSF members had balances between $200,000 and $1 million, while 94% had balances below $1.6 million, with 6% reporting balances over 1.6 million. SMSF members with balances of over $5 million made up 1%.
