The number of SMSF establishments has remained constant over the past five years, while wind-ups have continued to fall, leading to a rising trend of net establishments over that period, according to data released by the ATO today.
The “Self-managed superannuation funds: A statistical overview 2021-22” data set showed that while the average number of establishments each year for the five years to 30 June 2023 was 24,000 and the average number of wind-ups was 13,800, the latter number had fallen year by year since the 2018 financial year.
In that financial year, 25,307 new funds were established, while 25,263 were wound up, but over the next three financial years, wind-ups averaged around 17,500 a year, while establishments rose from 20,306 to 25,773 by the end of the 2021 financial year.
As such, net establishments rose from 44 in 2017/18 to 8490 in 2020/21 and continued to rise to 13,473 in 2021/22 as establishments increased to 28,184 and wind-ups fell to 14,711. While the data set covers the 2022 financial year, the ATO also included figures for the 2023 financial year in which 26,437 funds were established and 1846 were wound up, putting net establishments at 24,591.
The ATO figures show at the end 2022/23 there were 610,287 funds, an increase of 4.2 per cent on the previous financial year and a 9 per cent rise over the past five financial years, with 1.13 million members in those funds.
The total pool of SMSF assets grew by a similar factor in the past year, increasing by $32.7 billion or 3.9 per cent to $876.4 billion, while over the past five years SMSF assets have grown by $198.7 billion, or 29.3 per cent, and accounted for 24.7 per cent of the $3.57 trillion pool of superannuation assets as at 30 June 2023.
Figures for the average balance per fund and per member show over the five years to 30 June 2022, the average assets per member increased by 19.6 per cent to $780,000 and the average balance per fund rose by 18 per cent to $1.45 million.
Nearly three-quarters of those assets were held in five asset classes: Australian listed shares (27.5 per cent), cash and term deposits (17.9 per cent), unlisted trusts (12.2 per cent), non-residential real property (9.9 per cent) and limited recourse borrowing arrangements (6.7 per cent).
