The latest Investment Trends research has shown while adviser revenue from SMSF clients has reached record high levels in 2025, a large number of practitioners have not made any operational changes to better service this cohort.
The research house’s data reflected the fact adviser practices derived 31 per cent of revenues from servicing SMSFs in 2025, up from 26 per cent in the previous year.
“When we asked them what have you done differently when advising on SMSFs for the last 12 months, SMSF advisers were increasingly likely to say, compared to the last three years, that they hadn’t changed anything,” Investment Trends senior analyst Yigit Gunhan told selfmanagedsuper.
To this end, 45 per cent of those surveyed admitted to this inaction in 2025 compared to 39 per cent and 24 per cent who forwarded this answer in 2024 and 2023 respectively.
“[This is interesting because] they are more likely to say they did nothing differently, but they are still deriving more revenue [from this client base],” Gunhan added.
As such, he pointed out advisers are likely to be experiencing organic growth from SMSF clients, but not from new entrants to the sector as most of these individuals are not receiving advice.
For advisers who have amended their practices to increase the business they receive from SMSF clients, deepening relationships with accountants or accounting firms ranked number one, with 22 per cent of those surveyed responding in this manner.
The second most popular course of action advisers took to enhance their SMSF client revenue was to accelerate the adoption of technology in their practices, with 19 per cent of participants admitting they took this course of action. This was up from 17 per cent who indicated they had done so in 2024.
“We do have a theory as to why this has seen a slight uptick from last year and it’s the use of AI (artificial intelligence),” Gunhan explained.
A review and update of client risk profiles was named as the third most common initiative advisers undertook to boost their revenue from SMSFs, with 18 per cent of respondents saying they had done this. The statistic means more than double the amount of practitioners were conducting reviews for this purpose as only 7 per cent answered in this manner in 2024.
The survey activity was conducted between February and March and processed responses from 99 advisers.
