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Accountants must be more careful and selective when choosing SMSF education and training as the number of education providers in the space increases, according to the Institute of Public Accountants (IPA).
IPA warns accountants on quality of SMSF education
24 April 2014
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4 minute read
Speaking to AccontantsDaily’s sister publication, SMSF Adviser, the IPA’s executive general manager, leadership, Vicki Stylianou urged accountants to be wary of the quality of the SMSF education they undertake, given the recent influx of new training providers.
“Certainly a lot more people are getting into the SMSF area… you see people that are not traditionally in the SMSF education space but are jumping in,” she said.
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“If anything, the standards of the actual accountants and their knowledge is going up, partly because there is so much more out there. But I think the issue now becomes the quality of the education and the training they are receiving,” she added.
Ms Stylianou said accountants are generally “safe” if they get training from their accounting body or the SMSF Professionals’ Association of Australia (SPAA).
“If you are talking about others who are not members of one of the bodies or do education outside the accounting bodies or outside SPAA, I am saying accountants just have to be wary of the quality of education,” she said.
SPAA senior manager, technical and policy Jordan George said “broadly” accountants do have sound education concerning SMSFs and there is not necessarily anything that needs to be improved.
“I think it is up to each individual accountant to make sure they understand all the different factors around advising a client into an SMSF, and making sure they have the appropriate knowledge base and training to make sure they can provide quality advice to their client,” he said.
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