SMSF administration and working paper platform Cloudoffis is in the process of developing a tool using artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance its existing platform and assist practitioners with client compliance and reporting requirements.
The new offering is currently in a beta testing phase with its first development phase centred around the recognition of key SMSF documents and any compliance issues that may be present.
“As an accountant or auditor, what I do is look at financial data, opening up a document and first try to figure out whether it’s a bank statement or a wrap statement or [the like]. So first we had to teach our AI model how to understand and learn that so it will know [whether it is] an nab bank statement or Commonwealth Bank bank statement or a term deposit,” Cloudoffis co-founder Manish Sheladia told selfmanagedsuper.
“Now that works and once you do that you are then looking for specific information from those documents. So if it is a trust deed, then we are looking to identify if it is a corporate or individual one and if it is signed or if it needs amendments. We can extract that information out using AI.
“And then we apply the SMSF rules because it is a structure being audited for compliance.
“So this is where we are bringing AI technology to SMSFs, which is very specific contextually and very useful.”
The new facility already has the ability to recognise certain compliance issues, such as conflicts between the investment strategy and the portfolio holdings of an SMSF. However, it does not yet have the ability to examine the level of detail that would allow it to identify the percentages associated with asset class allocations.
The tool has been developed on the basis of client feedback and Cloudoffis co-founder Viral Kanabar believes it should be well received across the entire SMSF community.
“Having AI or algorithms should actually help the industry and help the trustees to manage their super fund better. Ultimately this is what drives us, [understanding how] I can help the 650,000 SMSFs in Australia to be better managed and be compliant,” Kanabar said.
“It should be in the interest of the Australian government as well.”
Cloudoffis is looking to launch the AI tool for practitioners in July.
