Delegates at the SMSF Professionals’ Association of Australia (SPAA) national conference will gain a better understanding of the significant e-commerce challenges of new contribution arrangements that come into effect on July 1.
SPAA’s director of technical and professional standards, Graeme Colley, says a key underlying message from the event will be “the impact of e-commerce going forward with self-managed funds”.
“We’ve got a number of speakers there who will link in with the changes that come in from July 1 this year, with large employers making contributions to self-managed funds, and then from next year it will be all employers; and we’ll look at the rollover of benefits to self-managed funds being done electronically,” Colley says.
“With the rollovers, while the government recently announced it wasn’t going to go ahead with the proposal, we do know that they didn’t like that proposal but that doesn’t mean they’re not going ahead with it. We’ve had a couple of discussions with the ATO, and the ATO have got other ideas on how it can be implemented simply.
“I imagine there will be some announcement about that.”
Colley says Steve Day, head of APAC customer supper for Amazon’s web services, will be discussing the impact of the cloud on businesses, and there will be lessons to be learned for businesses servicing SMSFs.
“The other underlying theme is estate planning, and things around estate planning,” Colley says.
“An another one is the investment stream. It’s trying to get the attendees – both the accountants and the financial planners – to think more broadly about investment strategies for the SMSFs, rather than just having it in the big banks and cash. I know there’s been some criticism of that.
There’s a couple of interesting speakers there who will try to get them to think more broadly about the types of investments they should have going forward. Many of these self-managed funds are going to be there for 30 or 40 years, if [trustees] want to keep them there until termination.”
Colley says session on social media also feature, and link back into he bigger issue of e-commerce.
SPAA itself will be putting technology to greater use at the conference. It has launched an online networking tool to enable delegates to find fellow delegates with matching interests, and to request catch-up meetings.
In a statement, Colley says delegates can plan and control their conference schedule and export it to their normal work calendar if desired; view profiles of other delegates, speakers and sponsors; use an interactive exhibition floor map; and post discussions for other delegates to participate in.
Sponsorship for the 2014 event has sold out and SPAA expects delegate number to reach capacity soon.
