SMSF Corporate Trustee
A self managed super fund (SMSF) must have a trustee, this could be either an individual (which is best known) and corporate. The benefits of using a corporate trustee have long been known, but for some reason SMSF trustees have had their ears closed.
For all SMSFs, about 70 per cent of funds have individual trustees. In the past five years, about 90 per cent of all new SMSFs have been set up with individual trustees. In a document published this year, ASIC provided five reasons why a corporate SMSF trustee is better than individual trustees. Click here to read the full article.
The law governing self-managed super funds provides for two basic structures for the trusteeship of a fund. A fund can be established and maintained with either the individual members of the fund acting as trustees or with a company as trustee (provided the members of the fund are the directors of the company).
Special rules apply for individual trustees of a fund with only one member. The decision as to which trustee structure to use is not one that should be taken lightly and it is certainly not a decision to be made on the basis of which option is the least expensive to implement.