ASIC's investor taskforce will start formulating plans from July 1 to help retail investors better understand risk and recognise potential investment scams.

The regulator will analyse the quality of advice, the quality of investor education, the amount of disclosure and the complexity of products, ASIC deputy chairman Jeremy Cooper told the Self-Managed Super Fund Professionals' Association of Australia annual conference in Brisbane yesterday.

It will also analyse how they are advertised in an attempt to help retail investors better understand the options available to them, Cooper said.

 ASIC announced the initiative in May last year.

"It's a way to improve how retail investors save for their long-term retirement," he said.

According to Cooper, with only around 20 per cent of Australians receiving any formal advice on investments ASIC still has major concerns, particularly over disclosure for investment products.

"As advisers to retail investors, in the guise of SMSFs, you all play a very important part in this process," he told delegates.

Recent ASIC research shows that almost half of investors questioned did not see themselves as retail investors.

"Forty nine per cent of investors thought they were professionals or something else," Cooper said.

"It's tough starting off with the realisation that almost half the people out there that we think of as investors don't see themselves that way. So we have a considerable amount of work to do.

"In reality we are all investors one way or another."