“When you take into account the growth in the overall retail ETF market over this period, the SMSF segment grew by 67 per cent,” he said.

“The research also revealed that the median balances of advised SMSF clients were the highest of the retail investor segments at $52,000. Direct SMSF investors followed, with median balances of $43,000,” he added.

Blackrock Australia head of ETF product and strategy Jon Howie told SMSF Adviser that SMSFs are “absolutely” one of the main drivers of ETF adoption.

“It is definitely fair to say that a large percentage of the adoption of ETFs in recent times has been through SMSFs, whether they are advised or not,” he said.

“[This is] because there’s been such a drive behind setting up SMSFs, and that drive has been to maintain control and manage costs and it is relatively important to keep things simple as well. ETFs really tick all of these boxes,” he added.

“The more that SMSFs grow in the market, and we can see the data that comes from the ATO that new registrations continue, we think that trend will continue to drive ETF adoption, absolutely,” he said.