One on one with…Lara Bourguignon

I’ve spent my whole career in financial services. I’m an accountant by trade, but decided to take the commercial route rather than the chartered accounting route. I worked in a number of organisations in an accounting and finance capacity for the first half of my career, but in a superannuation context. Then I got the opportunity to move into the superannuation side of the business I was in, which meant spending time in corporate superannuation, group insurance, looking at the members and customer experience side and then more recently running SuperConcepts. So this is actually my first foray into SMSFs.

I’m loving it. I recently attended an SMSF think tank hosted by ATO SMSF segment assistant commissioner Dana Fleming that included some of the better-known people in the sector, such as [Heffron SMSF Solutions managing director] Meg Heffron and [SMSF Association vice chair] Andrew Hamilton, and it made me realise it is such a unique part of the industry. There’s such diversity in terms of the geographic spread of service providers. The breadth of the market is so wide, but the players in it really work together for the benefit of the industry and that’s what I’m really enjoying about it. It’s fascinating. I learn something every day and you go from micro-technical issues all the way up to big macro opportunities. It’s great.

Yes absolutely. One of the paradoxes I think we’ve got to manage in this space stems from the unique characteristics of the sector. The appeal of SMSFs, and their difference, is the fact you can hold whatever you want in a fund and yet administration is a scale game really. Through the different systems being used, such as data feeds, you’re trying to build scale into something that, by its very nature, is complex and differentiated.

Yes. We launched our innovation lab about six months ago for this very reason and we’re about to go to market with some new developments. The other really important thing we’ve been refocusing on is the client experience and making sure we’ve got that connection with our clients. In servicing 20,000 funds we tread a constant fine line between retaining the pedigree of the local community-based-type ecosystem characteristics of the SMSF sector while at the same time, by necessity, implementing some institutional practices to enable us to run a business of that size sustainably.

I think we’ve got a way to go. One of the biggest challenges in the industry still is the manual nature of a lot of what we do. So I do think through things like artificial intelligence and conversational UI (user interface) and robotics we will be able to remove some of that manual work. In that context we’re thinking more of the value proposition to the accountant or the adviser to then enable them to spend more time with their clients. So I think there is a way to go, but I’m sure at some point we might tap out, but who knows where we’ll be then.

When I arrived the strategy had been to grow and consolidate and there was a five-year transformation road map that was really looking at how we were going to simplify the operations. The strategy is still right, but we’ve really spent the last nine months trying to consolidate, continue on the simplification agenda, making sure we’ve got that client proposition right and focusing on getting the basics right. The fact AMP has also been refreshing from the board to the CEO to the strategy means there are now similarities in the challenges both business arms are facing. But it’s been really good for us to be able to batten down our end-to-end business, I guess in some respects, unimpeded. The proposition from AMP ownership, alongside owning an end-to-end business they were letting run autonomously, involved a strategic hypothesis that the organisation was one of the only providers in the market to offer default, choice, master trust, wrap and SMSFs with regard to superannuation. That hasn’t gone away, but we’ve also started to think about the capabilities we’ve got here at SuperConcepts we could almost sell back into AMP. So if you take the innovation lab as an example, that would be software as a service that will be saleable to our software clients, but it will also be usable by SuperConcepts in the administration of our funds and arguably applicable to a lot of work AMP does. We’re starting to think outside the boundaries of just SMSF administration in the software space and that’s were there would be an opportunity to add value back into AMP and we’re trying to build that out over the coming 12 months.

We think it’s really important and in the last couple of years in the SMSF space the importance of education has continued to heighten and improve. We’ve probably had about 1000 trustees come through the courses we run over the last six or seven years and we put a lot of value on that. We’re very passionate about education and it’s the element that can really make a difference in helping trustees understand their obligations in running an SMSF, like the importance of having an investment strategy and maintaining proper documentation, and achieving goals like ensuring adequacy with their retirement savings.

We don’t support the reintroduction of the accountants’ exemption. We think there should be the same sets of requirements or clients should be afforded the same sort of protection regardless of whom they get their advice from. Whether it be accountants or advisers, I think we will see a mass outflow of practitioners over the next couple of years due to the education requirements and just some of the compliance obligations as well. We’re trying to make sure the things we’re working on will make it easier for accountants and advisers to do their jobs in a compliant way.

I think the amount of change undermines Australians’ confidence in the superannuation system. I wouldn’t ever want to point to one particular piece or five particular pieces of legislation and say they were unnecessary compared to other pieces of legislation because I think in general it’s all well intentioned. But I do think ongoing changes impact people’s confidence in the system. Also, every time something changes it redirects the focus of administrators and software providers and means we concentrate on compliance instead of other things that could be adding value. That’s important as many people running an SMSF use an administrator because we give them comfort they are compliant. I’m not saying that’s not important, but I’d rather be innovating than having to think about we record things differently. I think we’re going to get to the point where SMSFs have to report more frequently, so focusing on that and making sure we can provide trustees with easier ways to do this is more meaningful than investing in regulatory changes.

It would be the change in the advice landscape with developments like FASEA and the regulatory requirements on the adviser to be able to look after clients. It’s just such a fascinating time to be in the industry to be able to see the way all of that is being applied and who will decide to retire and who’ll stay and what their business models will look like. Also the advances in technology that I think will continue.

It would be to stop the continual regulatory change. It would be nice to be able to run the business and focus on education, great reporting that provides valuable insights, great technology that makes running an SMSF more efficient and effective.

Getting the compliance items like the transfer balance account report right. Indexation may be introduced later this year and the current time delay with SMSF reporting and servicing clients who are still wedded to annual reporting for their fund will potentially be a significant challenge. So our business will be facing the test of how to help remain compliant within the new framework without moving to much more frequent reporting. Working with the ATO and other segments of the industry to facilitate that in a way that’s not hugely burdensome for trustees and administrators could be challenging.