An India-based company is looking to capitalise on the rapid growth in self-managed superannuation funds (SMSFs) in Australia by providing an outsourced administration service to over-stretched accountants and administrators.
The company, Sundaram Business Services, has pointed to a "surge in newly-created SMSFs" in Australia and describes itself as the "largest provider of back-office processing for Australian SMSFs", with 6,000 self-managed funds processed by the firm each year.
Sundaram Business Services head of business development Harish Rao said the rapid growth of SMSFs – with 3,000 new funds being established each month – was stretching the resources of many accountants and superannuation administrators.
"For many accounting firms and dealer groups the growth in SMSFs is creating staffing issues," said Rao.
The company pointed to the Australian Taxation Office's quarterly survey of SMSFs, which found that almost 7,200 funds were established during the June quarter – while the total for the 2011-12 financial year was 36,270.
This is the busiest year for SMSF creation since 1995, according to Sundaram Business Services.
"It is difficult to build scale quickly to take care of such spikes in demand, and we have seen interest in the possibility of outsourcing the back-office processing of these funds," said Rao.
"We also find [our clients] are more interested in concentrating on activity which provides the most value to clients, and often move processing staff onto higher value accounting activities which bring in more business," he added.
