Financial advisers encouraged to engage children in SMSFs
Financial advisers should encourage the children of self-managed super fund (SMSF) trustees to join the SMSF as members to lower their administration costs and as a way of engaging the younger generation with superannuation, according to several SMSF advisers.
Making the children of a trustee a member of the SMSF would make them responsible for its management and engage them with their superannuation, according to Fiducian Financial Services SMSF adviser Eric Priebee.
An SMSF structure offers a number of strategies of preserving and creating family wealth, and more strategic benefits, he said.
He tries to encourage the younger generation of SMSF trustees into an SMSF for that reason, Priebee said.
The only difficulty was having a limit of four members to an SMSF in the case of large families, he added.
AMP adviser and director of Eluvia Mark O'Leary said making the trustee's children members of the fund would give the children an advantage of lower fees because of the larger amounts of money being managed from the parents.
He was getting traction encouraging people to think of an SMSF as a family fund, he said.
Hewison Private Wealth director Andrew Hewison said the main benefit of moving members into the SMSF was a relative cost reduction.
He agreed that it may be a useful way to engage children with their super, but said it was still a challenge to make the younger generation recognise the importance of super when they couldn't touch it for many years.
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