SMSF auditor legislation to increase costs

Firms could spin off auditing businesses

By Wouter Klijn
Wed 26 May 2010

Legislating SMSF auditor independence will increase costs, a financial services firm says.

Introducing legislation for the independence of self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF) auditors will lead to higher compliance costs for clients, according to financial services firm HLB Mann Judd.

"Being a large firm, we are doing the auditing in-house. We have different partners for tax issues, and we also have partners for auditing," HLB Mann Judd partner Andrew Yee said.

"We feel the gatekeeper issue of the auditor having to be independent of the provider of other services to the self-managed super fund trustee is going to increase the compliance costs for trustees," Yee said.

If legislation is introduced this could mean the provider would have to spin off part of its auditing business.

"We'll have to see the detail around it, but that could be what we have to do," Yee said.

The Cooper review's panel said it was in favour of legislated independence in its preliminary report published in April this year.

The measure should not result in increased audit fees for SMSF trustees but was likely to result in more specialisation among auditors, which could even reduce audit costs, the panel said.

But HLB Mann Judd head of financial planning and superannuation Michael Hutton argued this was unlikely to be the case for larger financial services firms.

"Typically, what firms do is they get another firm to come in and audit these super funds, but that is clumsy and it adds costs to the client," Hutton said.

"If we got external firms to come in and audit our more complicated super funds that would add a major cost to the client, compared to what we are charging," he said.

But Hutton did agree that for small firms independence could be an issue.

"If you are a sole practitioner you probably shouldn't be also auditing," he said.

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