A speech by Greg Tanzer, Commissioner, Australian Securities and Investments Commission to the CPA Australia SMSF Conference 2014, on 16 July 2014
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Today I will be focusing on the recent work ASIC has undertaken in relation to SMSFs and give an update on the proposed work over the coming months.
ASIC’s Deputy Chairman, Peter Kell, and I became jointly responsible for heading up ASIC’s SMSF taskforce in 2012, which was set up as a response to an increase in geared investment strategies, increasingly aggressive advertising, the collapse of Trio, and the subsequent Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services inquiry into the collapse of Trio. The taskforce’s main purpose is to examine high-risk SMSF issues.
The SMSF sector continues to grow rapidly and more Australians than ever before are either considering or operating an SMSF. Today, therefore, I’d like to focus on four key things:
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SMSFs and the critically important role of gatekeepers (including an update on the limited AFS licence for accountants and SMSF auditor registration)
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misleading and deceptive conduct, including misleading advertising of SMSFs
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ASIC’s focus on SMSF ‘one stop shop’ operators, and
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unlicensed financial services conduct.