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From 10 August 2026, new limited recourse borrowing arrangements entered by SMSFs are limited to acquiring business real property. Other asset classes, including residential property and listed securities, are no longer eligible for new LRBA funding under this restriction.

The SIS Regulations require an SMSF to formulate, review regularly, and give effect to a written investment strategy. An unwritten or informal understanding about how the fund invests does not satisfy this requirement. The strategy must address the risk and likely return of assets, …

New SMSFs pay a supervisory levy of $518 in their first year of operation. This is double the $259 annual levy that continuing funds pay from their second year onward. The levy is payable via the annual return and funds should account for this …

Compassionate release approvals dropped 5% in the period under review while the total value approved rose 2% to over $1.4 billion. This combination indicates stricter scrutiny without a corresponding fall in overall legitimate releases. The ATO's enforcement activity since July 2025 has targeted both …

Christopher Malcolm Edwards received a ten-year ban from providing financial services, effective 15 September 2025. Edwards held no Australian Financial Services licence but had been arranging self-managed superannuation funds and directing the retirement savings of clients into debentures issued by companies he controlled.

The Shield Master Fund and First Guardian collapses demonstrated gaps in data visibility over managed investment scheme participants and asset flows. With approximately 12,000 people and around $1 billion affected, the failures highlighted how limited regulators' real-time information was when schemes encountered difficulty.

For an SMSF to properly hold cryptocurrency, the assets must be stored in a wallet that is in the name of the fund. This requirement flows from the general obligation that fund assets must be clearly identifiable as belonging to the SMSF and kept …