Announced at the SMSF Association’s national conference in Sydney, Professor Deborah Ralston will take on the role for the next two years, taking over from Andrew Gale, who has been in the post since 2016.
Ms Ralston is currently a non-executive director of SMSFA. Ms Ralston is not an SMSF practitioner, but has held several leadership positions within financial services.
She is currently a part-time member of the payments system board at the Reserve Bank, non-executive director at Mortgage Choice and a professorial fellow at Monash University, and chaired ASIC’s digital finance advisory committee from 2015 to 2017.
Ms Ralston told InvestorDaily sister publication SMSF Adviser she is particularly “intrigued” by the development of SMSFA’s trustee-based service offerings.
“The trustee initiative has been part of the SMSF agenda for some time,” Ms Ralston said.
"We have certainly had a lot of interest. There are 1.1 million trustees out there, and many of them are looking for assistance. I think there’s a real opportunity to bring the whole community of SMSFs together – trustees and professionals,” she said.
Outside of that, Ms Ralston’s headline priority items also include projects through SMSFA’s research centre, the incoming education standards for financial advisers and data-based partnerships with the ATO.
