Andrea Slattery

The SMSF profession that has emerged over the past few years is proving to be a significant new professional career pathway for young Australians, says Andrea Slattery, Chief Executive Officer/Managing Director of the SMSF Professionals’ Association of Australia (SPAA).

“Built on the solid foundations of the $560 billion SMSF sector, this profession is providing exciting opportunities for those who have accounting, legal, tax and financial services backgrounds, for example, and are now extending their skills and training to become specialist SMSF advisors.

“These advisors are now using their previous professional experiences to build efficiencies in their service, advice and product development offerings – and SMSF trustees are the beneficiaries.”

Slattery says that in SPAA’s submissions to the Parliamentary Joint Committee inquiry into the professionalism of financial advice and the Financial System Inquiry (FSI) the organisation stressed that there is an emerging SMSF profession where people from a number of different disciplinary backgrounds are specialising in providing advice and services to SMSFs that have become the focus of their advice services.

“The emergence of this profession was also highlighted by the recent research report authored by SPAA and Macquarie that showed that for many professionals in this area their primary profession has become SMSF advice and their traditional profession is becoming secondary, while still supporting their role, but used as a base on which to build their high level competencies as an SMSF professional advisor.

“This rise of the SMSF profession is a direct response to SMSF trustees who are demanding more specialised and trusted advice to achieve their retirement income goals by self-managing their superannuation.”

To keep building the professionalism of this emerging professions, and the broader financial advice profession, SPAA has recommended five areas for fostering greater professionalism:

• Adequate and appropriate education and experience requirements.
• A co-regulatory approach to regulating financial advice.
• Requiring professional association membership for market participants.
• Maintaining high ethical and professional conduct standards in the financial advice profession that each individual must be personally accountable for.
• Establishing professional remuneration models.

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