Get the structure right from day one.

The structural difference. Under section 17A of the SIS Act, an SMSF must have either individual trustees or a corporate trustee. With individual trustees, each trustee must be a member, and each member must be a trustee (with limited exceptions for single-member funds). With a corporate trustee, each director must be a member, and each member must be a director.

For a single-member fund, the SIS Act gives slightly different options: a corporate trustee with one or two directors (the member can be the sole director), or two individual trustees (the member plus another person, typically a relative).

Setup cost differential. A corporate trustee costs more upfront, because a company has to be incorporated with ASIC before the fund is established. We include that ASIC company registration in our corporate trustee setup fee, so there’s no separate ASIC registration charge to arrange. Individual trustee structures don’t involve a company, so they avoid that set-up cost.

Ongoing cost differential. A corporate trustee attracts an ASIC annual review fee, currently $70 for a special-purpose super fund company (an SMSF trustee company), payable each year. Individual trustees have no equivalent ongoing fee.

Practical implications when membership changes. This is where the structures diverge sharply. With individual trustees, every fund asset is held in the names of the trustees. If a trustee retires, dies, gets divorced, or a new member joins, every asset (every property title, every share registry, every bank account, every investment) has to be re-titled. That’s slow, paperwork-heavy, and in the case of property can attract title-update costs and stamp duty considerations.

With a corporate trustee, the company holds the assets. A change in members (and therefore directors) is handled through ASIC director-change forms. The underlying assets stay in the company’s name. Far cleaner on death, divorce, or any membership change.

Penalty exposure. The ATO can issue administrative penalties for SIS Act contraventions (Part IV SIS Act). These are imposed per trustee. With four individual trustees, a single contravention can attract four sets of penalties. With a corporate trustee, there’s one penalty against the company.

Which structure is right for your circumstances depends on factors specific to you. Speak to your licensed financial adviser before deciding.

There’s no published minimum.

ASIC’s Information Sheet 274 (the current SMSF advice guidance, December 2022) explicitly does not set a dollar threshold. ASIC’s position is that “balance alone is not the driving indicator of suitability” and that starting balance is one factor among several, alongside the trustee’s time, skills, financial literacy, the planned investment strategy, expected contribution patterns, and whether the structure suits the member’s broader retirement strategy.

That said, costs do scale differently for an SMSF than for a retail or industry fund. Audit fees, ASIC fees (for corporate trustee funds), administration, and the SMSF supervisory levy ($259 per year, plus an extra $259 in the registration year) are largely fixed regardless of balance, so a smaller fund pays a higher percentage in fixed costs than a larger one.

There are scenarios where a lower starting balance still works: where the member is committing to a substantial near-term contribution (for example, rolling in further super, making a downsizer contribution, or contributing a property); where the trustee handles administration tasks themselves; or where a specific asset (such as business real property) drives the structure decision regardless of balance.

Whether the numbers stack up for your circumstances is a personal-advice question. We don’t answer that. We administer funds, we don’t recommend them. Speak to a licensed financial adviser before deciding.

This question is best framed as “what trustees must comply with” rather than “what to invest in”. Investment selection is an advice question. Here’s the compliance landscape.

Sole purpose test (s62 SIS Act): every investment the fund makes must be for the sole purpose of providing retirement benefits to members (or death benefits to dependants). Investments that provide a present-day benefit to a member or related party (using fund-owned property, holding collectables that members enjoy, lending to members) fail this test.

Lending and financial assistance to members (s65 SIS Act): the fund cannot lend money or provide financial assistance, directly or indirectly, to a member or a relative. This is an outright prohibition, not a percentage limit.

Acquiring assets from related parties (s66 SIS Act): the fund generally cannot acquire assets from members or related parties. Limited exceptions: listed shares acquired at market value, business real property acquired at market value, and in-house assets within the 5% limit.

In-house asset rule (Part 8 SIS Act): investments in, loans to, or leases with related parties of the fund are “in-house assets.” The fund’s in-house assets cannot exceed 5% of total fund assets, measured at market value at acquisition and at end of each financial year (sections 71–85 SIS Act and SMSFR 2009/4 cover the detail).

Arm’s length dealings (s109 SIS Act): every transaction the fund enters must be on arm’s length terms. The income tax consequence of breaching this is non-arm’s length income (NALI) under s295-550 ITAA 1997, taxed at the top marginal rate.

Investment strategy (regulation 4.09 SIS Regulations): trustees must formulate and regularly review a written investment strategy that addresses risk, return, diversification, liquidity, ability to discharge liabilities, and whether to hold insurance for members.

Borrowing (s67 SIS Act): the fund cannot borrow except in narrow circumstances, the main one being a limited recourse borrowing arrangement (LRBA) under sections 67A and 67B.

What we administer this for: we monitor in-house asset levels, document arm’s length terms, and prepare audit-ready records. Whether a particular investment is appropriate for your fund and your members is an investment-advice question. We don’t answer that.

The administration side.

Since 1 October 2021, all rollovers between super funds (including into and out of SMSFs) must use SuperStream. That means electronic rollover via the ATO’s gateway, with standardised data. Practically, that means the SMSF needs three things in place before a rollover can be received:

1. An electronic service address (ESA) that supports rollovers (not all ESAs do, so verify the ESA provider lists rollover capability)
2. A bank account in the fund’s name with the BSB and account number registered in the SMSF’s records held by the ATO
3. A complete fund record at the ATO end (registration finalised, member records reflecting the receiving member’s TFN)

The trustee initiates the rollover request. The transferring fund has, under the SuperStream standards, three business days from receipt of a valid initiation request to either action the rollover or seek further information. Typical end-to-end timing is around five working days once everything is in place.

We handle the administration, the documentation, and the post-rollover member account treatment (concessional / non-concessional split, preservation components, taxable / tax-free component tracking).

The advice side.

Whether to roll over existing super in the first place (whether you’re better off consolidating, whether you’d lose insurance cover by rolling, whether there are exit fees or buy-sell spreads worth considering) is a personal-advice question. We don’t answer that. Speak to a licensed financial adviser before initiating a rollover.