Portfolio management specialist Praemium is close to finalising the three organisations that will be providing the administration service for the new self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF) facility associated with its SmartWrap offering.
Discussions with the major administration providers in the SMSF sector were ongoing during the recent Self-Managed Super Funds Professionals' Association of Australia national conference held in Brisbane last month.
However, while the third-party SMSF administration providers are about to be finalised, Praemium group chief executive Arthur Naoumidis said it was only one aspect of the new service that advisers of SMSF clients and accountants would be able to benefit from.
"If the accountant really wants to do the administrative work for the SMSF, they can continue doing it and we will pay them to do it and that's the difference to other platform structures with administrative facilities," Naoumidis said.
"Our SMSF offering leverages off V-Wrap, which already has 18,000 super funds using it, and we integrate this with the accountant's own SMSF compliance software. That means the accountants gets fully audited, structured and reconciled data and we pay them to actually perform the final leg of the process, which is to print the compliance reports and the tax returns and sign them."
In addition, if advisers do not have an existing professional performing the SMSF administration work, but do not want to use the main service providers for this function, Praemium will help them out in another way.
"Advisers may say 'I'd rather have an accountant in my area do the work, can you introduce me to one that will do it' and in those cases we will refer them to a Praemium accountant in their locality to satisfy their request," Naoumidis said.
The announcement of the third-party SMSF administration providers associated with SmartWrap and the official launch of the new service will take place at the Praemium Business Solutions Conference to be held in Sydney at the Sheraton on the Park on 6 April.
