SMSF clients frequently ask us how their fund compares to others. The recently released June 2018 Benchmark Report issued by Class Super provides some interesting comparative data.

The report is a statistical analysis of the 163,000 SMSFs administered on Class. This represents over 27% of all SMSFs and is therefore statistically valid. It offers insights into fund membership, investment asset allocations and the impact of the recent super reforms.

The Great Pension Squeeze

The report leads with the headline “The Great Pension Squeeze” and estimates that 25% of SMSF assets have lost their tax free status in the last year. This follows the reduction in pension balances under the $1.6m transfer balance cap and the removal of the tax exemption on TRIS accounts.

There are now less SMSF assets held wholly in pension phase (down 17%) and considerably more in the mixed (both accumulation and pension) phase (up 12%).

As expected these changes will result in a large uplift in the tax payable on SMSF earnings.

The report also shows that the average fund balance is $1.4m and the average member balance is $734K. Also 58.6% of all SMSFs administered on Class have total assets that fall within the $500k – $5M range.On the asset side of things the overall asset allocation at 30 June 2018 shows that listed shares are the largest category of fund assets at 28.1%, cash and term deposits are 20.6%, unlisted trusts are 18.6% and property, both residential and commercial are 15.8%. Limited recourse borrowing arrangements are 3.4% which is much lower than might be expected given the amount of coverage these arrangements receive in the media.Read the full report here and if you have any queries or would like to discuss any of the details or your fund specifically please contact us.