The SMSF Association has raised its apprehension over the government’s proposal to have SMSF trustees provide a written investment strategy upfront at the time of fund establishment to the ATO given the regulatory characteristic of the sector.
In particular the professional body is questioning what this measure would achieve if it is being implemented in an effort to improve the diversification of SMSF investment portfolios.
“We are concerned if the ATO is going to start to receive investment strategies [as to] what actually it is going to do with these because it is not a prudential supervisor,” SMSF Association chief executive Peter Burgess told attendees at the ASF Audits Technical Summit 2026 held in Adelaide on Friday.
“A prudential supervisor is a regulator that actually has control over where you invest, essentially, or making sure that the fund is making appropriate decisions around investments and diversification. That’s not the ATO. The ATO is not a prudential regulator of the SMSF sector,” he explained.
He pointed out SMSF portfolio diversification may look inadequate at face value but an initial assessment may not reflect the entire wealth situation of a trustee nor their plans to evolve their fund investments over time.
“We know [the ATO] has had issues in the past where an SMSF has a substantial amount of its balance in a property for example but when you consider the other circumstances then that’s not unreasonable,” he indicated.
“We also know that for self-managed super funds the strategy [the trustees] put in place recognises that and they are using future contributions to diversify.
“That’s all part of a legitimate strategy.”
Further, ASF Audits head of technical Jo Hurley identified the challenges involved if individuals are required to formulate an investment strategy before any money has actually been contributed to the fund.
“Investment strategies are constantly evolving and it’s not necessarily the case that trustees will be fully determined on the strategy before the money is even set up and they’ve gotten comfortable in that process,” Hurley said.
Darin Tyson-Chan
Editor
Darin is the founder and publisher of Benchmark Media, an independent publishing house whose mastheads include financialobserver, selfmanagedsuper and smstrusteenews. He has been covering the financial services space for over a decade and in this time he has worked for a variety of trade publications. Darin has also written for the Money section published in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
Articles by Darin