The tightening of the contributions caps and the inherent compliance issues they have imposed on self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF) trustees has not slowed the public's interest in the sector, according to HLB Mann Judd head of wealth management Michael Hutton.
"It's still a very active area. I thought the interest would die down once the contribution limits had been reduced, because it's hard to get that weight of money into the fund to justify size issues," he said.
"But there is still a fair bit of interest in self-managed funds."
The latest superannuation industry statistics released by the Australia Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) supported Hutton's views as they showed the number of SMSFs grew from 401,929 to 428,198 in the 12 months to June 2010.
This included a total of 27,340 establishments for the period, and represented a net growth rate of 6.5 per cent compared to a negative growth rate of 8 per cent experienced by other sectors of the industry.
However, Hutton said further interest in the sector could be achieved by moving away from terms like 'do it yourself' and 'self-managed' to eliminate any ambiguity created by these labels.
"We prefer to call them personal super funds and the reason for that is DIY super or self-managed super gives the connotation that when they are set up someone has to self-manage it and do it for themselves," he said.
"We think there is a fairly well established community of advisers out there that can help people with running their own fund."
