The SMSF Professionals’ Association of Australia (SPAA) has welcomed statistics that the self-managed super fund (SMSF) sector is growing at a steady pace and not booming out of proportion to the wider superannuation sector.
Late last week the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA) released superannuation statistics for the 12-month period to the end of June 2103 which showed that SMSFs increased by 7 per cent, or 33,500, to more than 509,000 funds.
The underlying assets within those funds increased by 15.3 per cent, or $67.4 billion, due to stronger markets and now stands at $505.5 billion at 30 June 2013.
SPAA senior manager, technical & policy Jordan George said this growth was both encouraging and in the preferred region of growth for SPAA.
“Fund growth in the high single digits is where SPAA likes to see it – solid growth without the suggestion that there is a mad rush into SMSFs. It all points to a healthy SMSF sector with continual growth in the size of the sector and the assets that are being placed in SMSFs,” George said.
“It certainly reinforces the fact that SMSFs continue to remain popular and that more and more Australians have the confidence to manage their own retirement savings through an SMSF, comfortable in the knowledge they can get specialist advice when they need it.”
According to SPAA, SMSFs make up one third of the superannuation market representing 31.2 per cent of all assets in superannuation, followed by retail funds with 26.1 per cent, industry funds at 20 per cent and public sector funds with 15.9 per cent of assets.
