Recent ATO data has confirmed the auditors who review more than 250 SMSFs annually have significantly increased their client base over the past five income years, however, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) noted this trend does not mean the quality of services provided will automatically diminish.
“The data based on the 2024 SMSF annual overview for audits performed by SMSF auditors, that’s published as part of the ATO annual statistical overview … shows that 11.5 per cent of the auditor population are now auditing 75 per cent of all SMSFs,” ATO SMSF risk and intelligence director Paul Delahunty told delegates at the recent SMSF Association National Conference 2026 during a panel session into regulator sector insights.
Delahunty also took the opportunity to highlight the significance of these data points.
“It’s not an equal comparison, but if we go back a couple of years to 2020, it was 8.6 per cent of auditors [servicing] 63 per cent of the funds. So there [has been] a shift,” he added.
“That doesn’t automatically mean that any auditor who undertakes over 250 audits a year has had growth in their client base. We obviously have visibility as to which firms and their number of audits signed off per year.
“But as mentioned, we are seeing unprecedented growth in relation to the [total] number of SMSFs and what we are seeing is there is noticeable consolidation of audit numbers occurring among the larger audit firms.”
Fellow panellist ASIC enforcement and compliance senior manager Peter Ridgley warned against making the assumption the quality of the audits this cohort is performing has been lowered and presents a concern simply because their workload may have increased.
“With some auditors doing a lot more than 250 [reviews annually, the quality of audits] depends on their system of quality control,” Ridgley said.
“Audit quality is audit quality whether there are 500 audits or 50 audits [performed] a year. It depends on the systems that are in place for the particular number of audits.”
