I’ve often said I am not a conspiracy theorist, but I have to say recent events in Canberra can only have fuelled speculation the superannuation industry will be facing outright domination by industry funds should Labor win government next year.

The debate over the ability of SMSFs to use limited recourse borrowing arrangements (LRBA) seems to have gained momentum recently, with calls to ban these facilities once again being suggested by some parts of the industry.

When you hear the term political risk it is often mentioned as a factor to take into account when investing in a particular part of the world, such as certain emerging markets. It’s not usually associated with savings plans of modern economies, but that is exactly what we’re witnessing in this country.

In March, the Labor Party announced its proposal to ban the ability for SMSFs in full pension mode without a member receiving either a full or part age pension to receive imputation refund credits from the ATO.

Readers of my past editorials will know I have been extremely critical of some of the changes made to the superannuation system and in particular SMSFs by our elected officials in Canberra.

The Productivity Commission released its draft report, “Superannuation: Assessing efficiency and competitiveness”, a few weeks ago and while most of the reporting has centred on the larger funds regulated by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), there was a small amount of content about SMSFs.

The 2018 federal budget has now been handed down and we can all breathe a sigh of relief there were no massive changes to the superannuation sector this year. Instead the measures announced could be considered as system fine-tuning around the edges. Yet for SMSFs there were two really significant announcements. One was the ability […]

Back in May last year I wrote an editorial that suggested the politicians of this country hated SMSFs. At the time I came to this conclusion on the back of the new rules applying to limited recourse borrowing arrangements and how targeted they were to penalising this particular sector of the superannuation industry.

In the normal course of my job I have to attend just about every presentation regarding superannuation, whether it is specific to SMSFs or not.