The Self Managed Super Professionals Association of Australia (SPAA) has warned members to act only within their business boundaries and ensure they hold appropriate licenses for all activities.
“Make sure you stick to what your core business is, whether that’s self managed fund administration, financial planning or the accounting practice.
“And if that’s what you’re doing, make sure you’re properly qualified and have got the right license to undertake that,” says Graeme Colley, SPAA’s director of technical and professional standards.
He spoke with Professional Planner about SPAA’s Quality Review Program (QRP), which will soon undergo an internal review and revamp.
Colley expects the changes are expected some time in 2015. “It takes time to get it through, we’ve first got to test it with some of our members. We need to make sure it’s helpful to members and need to get their buy-in,” he says.
What is QRP?
SPAA’s Quality Review Program spans continuing professional development, staff acquisition and staff retention, with CPD often emerging as an area of interest in discussions with regulators, particularly ASIC.
“In talking to ASIC about our members, one of the things they bring up is that it’s okay to have a CPD system, but if you don’t do anything with it, then it’s not worth anything.
“We’re showing them we’re certainly serious about the way in which we review our members in making sure they meet the CPD requirements. And for those that don’t, we certainly exclude them,” Colley adds.
In addition to CPD non-compliance, he refers to other conditions for exclusion from SPAA, including prosecution by an industry regulator and business bankruptcy. These are outlined in the association’s constitution.
It’s not about bullying
While he suggests quality review programs are sometimes poorly regarded, “I think you can be a bully in…telling your members how they should be running their businesses.
“The QRPs have that sort of bent in them, and we don’t intend it to be that way, because we don’t run people’s businesses.”
Instead, Colley views it as a valuable way to ensure its members have the appropriate SMSF training. “What we see with them, in some cases they may not be meeting all the requirements [because] they may not have the training that they really need.”
“We see QRP as a mentoring program, so that we’re trying to help them run a better self-managed fund business.
Issues of non-compliance
Colley reveals some of the non-compliant behaviour SPAA has discovered in the eight years it has had QRP in place.
In some surveys of accountants, it found a relatively high proportion were doing their own legal drafting, for instance.
“It’s only around 1 per cent [of members], but it should be zero,” Colley says.
“Or they’re saying they’re providing financial planning advice in one area, and in the next they’re saying they don’t. Which one is it?”
In addition to the QRP review, SPAA also plans to introduce a practice certificate for members.
“We’ve trialled that, mainly from the point of view that the practice certificates from some organisations don’t specialise in running a self managed fund business.
“That will be a course that we provide, where we’re looking at ‘how do you build a self managed fund business?’ That will be part of QRP as well.”
