“When you think about the process that a trustee has to go through to put in an investment strategy, it’s the same process that large funds have to do that was put in the legislation back in 1993 when SMSFs didn’t really exist,” said AMP SMSF’s head of technical, policy and education services, Peter Burgess, at a roundtable in Sydney yesterday.

“For some, it’s a tick-of-the-box type process, it’s a templated process. Does it really add any value, does it have any meaning for trustees? That’s the question,” he said.

Having an investment strategy focused more on goal setting and benchmarking could potentially be more worthwhile than what the current law requires, Mr Burgess added.