Translating technical expertise into better businesses and more content aimed at addressing a gap in continuing professional development (CPD) for self-managed super fund (SMSF) auditors are two key themes of the 2016 SMSF Association National Conference, to be held in Adelaide in February.

“We’ve really amped up the auditor content; and … we’ve got more practice management type session than we’ve had in the past,” says Liz Ward, SMSFA’s head of education services.

“There’s a regulatory requirement now for SMSF auditors to specifically get eight hours of CPD on SMSF audit topics – so we are responding to that.

“Also [we’ve had] requests from members for more audit content. We’ve gone through the programs and when we’re talking to the people who are doing the sessions we’ve said tell us the occupations that will really benefit from this content, and we’ve skewed the content enough so while it might not be black-and-white, this-is-SIS-Act-compliance, they will get valuable content from it.”

Ward says SMSFA accredits other providers of education for content aimed at auditors, but there has not been a significant increase in education programs for auditors despite the greater regulatory requirement.

“There hasn’t been a huge response by the market to develop audit training,” Ward says.

“There’s not been any new entrants, which is surprising, given there’s about 7000 auditors. I’m really surprised that the education market hasn’t responded to that.”

Education will develop

The SMSF Association’s director of technical and professional standards, Graeme Colley, says the education market will most likely develop alongside increased regulatory scrutiny of auditors.

“Particularly the big auditors, I think there’s 60 auditors audit more than 10,000 funds; it’s a very concentrated field. ASIC is going to analyse those.

“[ASIC and the Australian Taxation Office] are analysing us. We’ve got interviews in January with them on that. We’ve already been through one set of that. And the other thing with getting ASIC involved in it is having a look at who should be disqualified, and things like that.

“We’ve got an audit panel that we’ve recommended to ASIC and they then choose members of that audit panel to then go and audit auditors they thing are not doing the right thing. They do that at the auditors’ cost, too.

“So they are getting fair dinkum, and I think with that, if the auditors start to get scared, maybe that’s when they’ll go to the courses”.

Ward says SMSFA is keen to learn from the results of auditor competency exams administered by ASIC where education is lacking to help guide the development of ongoing education and training for auditors.

“Because of the exam that they are running – it’s coming up to two years now – they should have very clear trends on deficit of knowledge,” Ward says.

“I keep asking, can you let us know what those trends are, so we can respond. But they have not done that analysis. So a lot of the information would be good to get our hands on, so the industry could respond. Because you don’t know what you don’t know, and how can you respond with a raining program which is tailored as opposed to just firing bullets and hope you hit.”

Deeper practice management

Ward says the SMSF Association is also responding to ongoing requests from members for deeper practice management content at the conference.

“Historically there’s been a lot of technical content,” Ward says.

“But we’d really like to balance that with [a focus on] how do I apply that in my business, how do I grow my SMSF practice?

“We’ve responded to what members and delegates have told us in the past.”

Ward says strong technical content remains “absolutely key” to the conference and its agenda.

“We’ve just inserted some practice management,” Ward says.

“It’s not that it isn’t technical, it’s how you take that technical content and apply it in your practice.”

Join the discussion