National SMSF Conference - opening thoughts

What a great start to the National SMSF Conference this morning! It’s taking place at the beautiful Hilton Hotel in Sydney and over 300 members are participating.

Neil Olesen from the Australian Tax Office kicked the morning off with an update on the regulation of SMSFs. He pointed out that in 1999, there were 190,000 SMSFs in Australia and today that number has increased to 430,000. This suggests that Chartered Accountants will continue to work with more and more SMSF trustees and the opportunities in this sector are growing at a considerable pace.

David Shirlow, the Executive Director of Macquarie Bank gave us all an update on superannuation policy developments. Happily, he doesn’t think a change in government minister (from Bowen to Shorten) will slow down the implementation of the Future of Financial Advice reforms and expects it to be effective from 1 July, 2012. David said the Cooper Review recommendations around SMSFs were generally positive.

I don’t entirely agree with David – I think some of the Cooper recommendations need a lot more scrutiny. Let’s not forget there are different ways of achieving the objectives Jeremy Cooper is trying to achieve in the SMSF space. More on that later.

There are more exciting sessions to come today and tomorrow. I am enjoying the opportunity to meet with members and to hear their thoughts and ideas on superannuation. Please feel free to share your views about the conference or SMSFs in general, either in person, via this blog or by email.