BGL offering well received

 Self-managed super fund (SMSF) software vendor, BGL Corporate Solutions, has reported that it has now prepared more than 300 actuarial certificates with its actuary partners, Act2 Solutions and Cumpston Sarjeant.

BGL’s actuarial service for self-managed super funds was first released in May 2011, and is fully integrated with the company’s Simple Fund software.

According to Ron Lesh, Managing Director of BGL, actuarial certificates are required by over 70,000 SMSFs each year, and provide SMSF administrators with the percentage of income that is exempt from fund income tax where the fund has members receiving a pension.

“Our clients have already saved hundreds of hours of data entry by using the process,” said Lesh. “In the past, to prepare an actuarial certificate, clients would need to go to the actuaries web site, download the actuary’s spreadsheet, input details of contributions, transfers in and out, pensions and other benefits paid during the year, and then submit the spreadsheet to the actuary so they can prepare the certificate.

“To input the data alone would often take more than an hour,” he said.

Providing a strong alternative to such a process, BGL’s Simple Fund software automatically determines the transactions to be included in the calculations, calculates the exempt income percentage, pre-fills the actuarial certificate, and then provides the data and supporting documents to the actuary for review.

The actuary reviews the data, and in just a few minutes the client is advised the certificate is available. At the same time, the exempt income percentage is automatically saved in the appropriate place in the software. It is a very simple, automated, seamless process.

Lesh said BGL would be adding Bendzulla Actuarial to its actuaries list in late July 2011, and Heffron Consulting before the end of September 2011.