True leadership is needed from professional organisations to repair the erosion of trust in the accounting profession, the head of an industry body has said.

Licensed accountants must take up the challenge of providing more proactive, prospective advice to their SMSF clients as issues such as taking a greater amount of their minimum pension income requires this shift under the new super reforms.

Accountants authorised to provide financial advice to the SMSF market have revealed producing statements of advice (SOA) was their biggest challenge, according to industry research.

BT Financial Group (BTFG) today announced a partnership with BGL Corporate Solutions to enable accountants to move to the cloud and get the most out of the BT Panorama platform.

BGL Corporate Solutions has increased its activity for building data integration with the accounting community through its cloud products, Simple Fund 360 and CAS 360.

Accountants have been told to step up to the challenge of servicing their SMSF clients as their role has only been reinforced by the new super reforms, along with the added requirements around the ATO’s transfer balance account report (TBAR) regime.

The process behind how assets held in an SMSF have been valued is the most important element and not who actually valued the assets, a senior executive with a large chartered accounting firm has said.

There are significant prospects for SMSF accountants that choose to embrace robo-advice for their clients as well as financial technology, or fintech, more broadly.