Super News

The Financial System Inquiry (FSI) Report has made a few recommendations and the SMSF industry, one can say with conviction, is not all too happy with them. If Campbell Report in 1981 deregulated the financial market and Wallis report led to the setting up of APRA and ASIC in 1997, the FSI Report about SMSF lending may have the industry rushing for cover.

Research throws up an interesting observation. As much as 84% of SMSF trustees do not have a life insurance cover and in numbers, they come up to about 630,000 couples. So there is definitely an opportunity waiting to be lapped up in the SMSF insurance world.

Gearing being available as it is to them, SMSFs find it easy to lap up residential properties. This fact did not find favour with former Prime Minister Paul Keating. If his wishes were to be kept in mind, we would have had SMSFs barred from investing in residential real estate.

There are more than a few tax determinations issued by the ATO over the last half year or so. Each one of them deals with some crucial aspect of SMSF taxation. Let us talk about some of them.

Any industry comes with its fair share of jargon. Some of them are interesting and others outright weird. Yet, once deciphered, they all come out straight and meaningful. Let us take up a few Superannuation terms within the ambit of this write-up.

A short name suits a Self-managed Super Fund much more than a long one and there is a good reason why it is so. If the names are long, it is likely that the bank accounts and the asset registers will cough up incomplete names. I can personally vouch knowing computer systems in banks which categorically deny registering long names.