Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino used his National Press Club address on 19 August 2026 to announce a broad package of superannuation reforms. If you run an SMSF, the coverage can read alarmingly: new ATO powers, rules about your bank account, a knowledge requirement for trustees, and a compensation levy heading your way.
Take a breath first.
Most of this is aimed squarely at the operators behind the Shield and First Guardian collapses, where around 12,000 people lost more than $1 billion after being moved out of regulated super and into high-risk schemes.
The honest headline: for a well-run SMSF, most of these measures are either things you already do or things aimed at someone else entirely. The new costs are modest. And almost none of it is law yet.
What was actually announced?
Mulino framed the package around three priorities: stopping harm at the first point of contact, tightening the guardrails across the system, and putting the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort (the CSLR, the fund that pays victims of financial misconduct when no one else will) on a sustainable footing.
The centrepiece for consumers is a crackdown on “lead generation”. That’s the pipeline where a social-media ad (“Check your super”, “Find your lost super”) hands your details to a telemarketer, who steers you toward an adviser and a switch. Under the changes, unlicensed real-time contact about superannuation will be banned, and licensees will have to take reasonable steps to make sure their lead-generation activity is compliant. The anti-hawking rules are being strengthened at the same time, with tighter consent requirements, the adviser exemption limited to existing client relationships, and heavier penalties.
There are also new obligations on managed investment schemes, including stronger audit and assurance requirements and a duty to notify ASIC when a scheme freezes, suspends or otherwise restricts redemptions.
None of that is about your fund. It’s about the road that led people into the wrong one.
What changes for SMSFs specifically
The package folds in a set of measures pointed directly at self-managed funds. As announced, these are:
- A new ATO power to block a rollover into an SMSF where there is a well-founded suspicion of consumer harm.
- Expanded data-sharing between ASIC and the ATO, so concerning rollover activity is spotted earlier.
- A requirement for SMSFs to hold uniquely identifiable bank accounts.
- Minimum trustee knowledge requirements.
- Greater transparency around adviser involvement, including a requirement for newly established funds to disclose any adviser involved in setting them up, and a dedicated line item in the annual financial statements showing advice fees deducted during the year.
A few of these will look familiar.
The unique bank account is not new ground. The ATO already instructs every SMSF to hold its own dedicated account, separate from personal, business and tax-agent accounts, and keeping the fund’s money and assets separate is an operating standard under reg 4.09A SISR 1994, not just a suggestion. What’s new here is making the account uniquely identifiable, so rollovers can be matched and verified (see ato.gov.au, “Set up your SMSF bank account”). If your fund is properly administered, this one is likely already done.
The rollover-block power is the sharp end. It gives the ATO a way to stop money moving into a fund where something looks wrong before the damage is done, rather than chasing it afterwards. For a legitimate fund it should be invisible. For the Shield and First Guardian pipeline, it’s the point of the exercise.
The trustee knowledge requirement is the genuinely new one. There’s no detail yet on what it will look like, who administers it, or when it starts. We’ll be watching the consultation closely.
On the whole package, the Minister’s own framing was that for most trustees these measures “reflect practices already in place”. That squares with how it lands for a properly run fund.
The cost side: the CSLR and the supervisory levy
This is where a real number attaches to your fund, and it’s a small one.
SMSFs are being roped into the CSLR. The government has confirmed the sector will contribute to future special levies, with an estimate that individual SMSFs are likely to pay no more than $20 per leviable period, scaled to the size of the SMSF population’s assets against the APRA-regulated sector. The Minister ruled out excluding SMSFs altogether, on the basis that carving them out would leave gaps in consumer protection.
The mechanism behind the levy is a three-tier “waterfall” model, applied first to the $170.3 million special levy attributed to the financial advice sub-sector for 2026-27. Applying the waterfall doesn’t automatically mean a sub-sector pays its maximum cap; Treasury is still analysing the settings before any final decision.
Separately, compensation under the scheme is being limited to actual investment losses rather than hypothetical (“but for”) losses, for claims lodged with AFCA after 30 June 2027. The $150,000 per-claim cap stays.
There’s a second, smaller cost worth flagging. The SMSF supervisory levy is set to rise for the first time since 2013, and the first year’s levy will be collected when a fund is established rather than in arrears. For existing funds that’s a modest annual change; for new funds it’s a timing shift to be aware of at setup.
A general reminder before we go further: this article is information about the reforms, not personal financial advice. Whether any of this changes what you should do with your own fund depends on your circumstances, and that’s a conversation for a licensed adviser.
The fairness of asking SMSFs to help fund the CSLR is contested. Industry bodies including ASFA and the SMSF Association have argued that most SMSF members can’t claim from the scheme in the first place, so a levy on them looks like paying for a scheme they’re largely shut out of. My read, on current settings: the dollar figure is small, so the sharper issue is the principle rather than the cost, and the design detail (how much, from when, on what basis) is exactly what the consultation will settle.
What hasn’t changed, but matters
Plenty.
There’s no new tax on running your fund in this package. The sole purpose test (s 62 SIS Act), the contribution rules, the way your fund is administered and audited each year: all untouched by these announcements.
What has changed is the scrutiny on how money gets into an SMSF, and on who is advising the switch. For a discerning trustee that’s the useful read. The reforms don’t make SMSFs harder to run well. They make it harder to be pushed into one badly.
The mechanics matter
One caveat carries more weight than any single measure above: almost none of this is law yet.
These are announcements. Most now go through consultation, then draft legislation, then a start date. The government has flagged further consultation on lead generation, switching and trustee governance before final decisions are made. Timelines will move, and detail will change.
We’ll update this piece if Treasury or the ATO publishes guidance that changes the position.
What should you do now?
Very little, which is the point of getting ahead of it.
Check that your fund holds its own unique bank account and that the details are current with the ATO. Keep your fund and member records up to date. And if you were first pointed toward starting or switching an SMSF by a social-media ad or an unsolicited call, that’s precisely the pipeline these reforms are built to shut down, and it’s worth a proper second look at how that fund was set up.
Take Marcus, who runs a $700k SMSF with his wife through a corporate trustee. Their fund has its own bank account, records lodged and current, and an accountant handling compliance. For Marcus, this whole package amounts to a small levy line to keep an eye on and nothing else to do. That’s where most well-run funds sit.
Where this leaves you
If you’ve got an SMSF: you almost certainly don’t need to do anything today beyond confirming your bank account and records are in order. The thing to track is the CSLR levy detail as it firms up.
If you’re considering an SMSF: none of this changes whether an SMSF suits you, but it’s a good reminder to be sure the person recommending it is licensed, and that the recommendation starts with your situation rather than a product.
If you advise SMSF trustees: the lead-generation, anti-hawking and adviser-fee-transparency measures are the ones to read closely, and the consultation timeline is where the detail gets decided.
Not sure whether your SMSF is set up the way these reforms assume, or whether your bank account and records are correctly recorded with the ATO? Book a 15-minute call and we’ll run through it together. No charge, no pressure.
Book a 15-minute call →Sources: The Hon Dr Daniel Mulino MP, address to the National Press Club, 19 August 2026 (Treasury Ministers, ministers.treasury.gov.au); Financial Standard, “Mulino unveils sweeping reforms to cold calling, MISs” and “Mulino brings New Class of Advisers to life, guarantees fairer CSLR funding” (19 August 2026); ABC News, “Unlicensed telemarketers target of government crackdown on super switching schemes” (19 August 2026); Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act 1993 (Cth) s 62; Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Regulations 1994 reg 4.09A; ATO, “Set up your SMSF bank account” and “Rollovers for SMSFs” (ato.gov.au); Compensation Scheme of Last Resort.
