ASIC cracks down on SMSF auditor non-compliance | Australian Markets

The Australian Securities and Investments Fee (ASIC) has taken motion towards 17 self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF) auditors during the ultimate six months of 2024, after the regulator recognized a number of situations of misconduct.

Between 1 July and 31 December 2024, ASIC disqualified 4 SMSF auditors, utilized further circumstances to 2 SMSF auditors and cancelled the registration of 11 SMSF auditors as a consequence of breaches of:

• the skilled obligations of authorized SMSF auditors, reminiscent of complying with auditing and assurance requirements, the auditor independence necessities, persevering with skilled development necessities or holding a present coverage of skilled indemnity insurance coverage,
• compliance with annual assertion necessities, and
• having the sensible expertise crucial to hold out SMSF audits.

Joseph Badawy, Gareth Evans, Vjekoslav Fak and Ryan McGrath have been the 4 SMSF auditors to be disqualified; Brent Connor and Sam Danieli had the extra circumstances imposed on their registrations; and the registrations of Evan Bekiaris, David Bromet, Judy Chu, Denis Ford, Bruce Mackley, Michael Mazza, Geoffrey Web page, Anthony Richards, Michel Schoers, Wayne Tilley and Grace Wong have been cancelled by ASIC.

The Australian Taxation Workplace (ATO) had referred the 17 auditors to ASIC for compliance checks and was significantly chargeable for figuring out the 11 auditors whose registrations have been cancelled as having “insufficient practical experience”.

“SMSF auditors are responsible for providing assurance on assets worth $1 trillion held in over 638,000 SMSFs. SMSF auditors are trusted gatekeepers that contribute to the integrity and confidence in the SMSF regime,” the regulator’s assertion stated.

“ASIC is empowered to cancel the registration of SMSF auditors that do not perform any significant audit work during a continuous period of 5 years.”

This comes after ASIC had additionally taken motion towards three different SMSF auditors in October final yr, suspending them for one yr every after the watchdog discovered that they had “breached independence requirements by auditing thousands of SMSF clients from a single referral source, who is a SMSF administration provider”.