Smarter SMSF has released a number of tools and documents to assist practitioners and trustees in exiting from legacy pensions following the government’s announcement of a five-year window in which to take action.
The Legacy Pension Hub will form part of the Smarter SMSF document platform and include educational tools, calculators and documents that can be used in the commutation of market-linked pensions (MLP), lifetime complying pensions and life expectancy complying pensions, and for making reserve allocations.
New MLP commutation documents are available to order, either manually or through a form that connects with software from administration firms BGL, Class and SuperMate.
Smarter SMSF chief executive Aaron Dunn said: “We understand that this is a complex area to navigate for professionals who may only have a few of these clients around. That’s why we’ve built a range of checklists, fact sheets and calculators to ensure that the documentation being prepared complies with the new regulations and fund’s governing rules.”
As a result of the new regulations announced on 7 December last year, Smarter SMSF has also updated its deed to include provisions for commutation of legacy pensions and allocations from fund reserves. Additionally, its legal review process for deeds now considers what updates are required to a fund’s governing rules to allow it to make a commutation or allocate a reserve.
The new documents can be used in their current form to create certain commutation documents and manual forms can also be submitted to Smarter SMSF for preparation at a fixed fee.
Smarter SMSF technical and education manager Tim Miller said, according to Treasury estimates, there were 16,900 individuals holding legacy pensions and sector involvement in the consultation process with the government department led to better outcomes for the SMSF trustees and members.
“It was a valuable process to be involved in as we were able to clarify a number of key issues that are not well understood within the regulations, but also provide insight into how these pensions operate within the SMSF sector,” Miller said.
