Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CAANZ) head of superannuation Liz Westover has used her opening speech at the professional body’s National SMSF Conference 2015 today to strongly encourage accountants to start their licensing process if they have not already done so.
“You should be well underway with your decision making process and importantly underway with your RG 146 training,” Westover told the conference on the Gold Coast.
“So if you’re not in that boat yet, please, you need to be engaging with us to get those processes underway.
“We cannot overstate the importance of members engaging with us to understand their choices and their required activity.”
She emphasised accountants needed to decide on what services they would like to offer in the future immediately and how they intended to operate, if at all, under the new licensing rules.
While inaction continues to surround the new licensing arrangements, the number of professionals looking to gain the CAANZ SMSF specialist designation is growing.
“We now have 340 approved SMSF specialists who are chartered accountants,” Westover revealed.
“Over 500 people have attended the workshops through UNSW, which supports our specialisation, and this workshop continues to be one of the few advanced courses that are available with robust assessment attached, which is essentially setting the bar for education for SMSF specialisation.”
