A second survey conducted more recently shows that since then, 90 per cent of these unlicensed firms still remain unlicensed, according to ASAP Advice chief executive Jim Hennington.

Mr Hennington said there were two main reasons why accounting firms chose not to become licensed. They either did not believe their firm provided financial advice or they preferred to refer their SMSF clients to external financial planners.

“On average, the firms we surveyed looked after 63 SMSFs each and they believed their client bank only required 14 statements of advice per year,” he said.

“If you’re only going to need 14 statements of advice throughout the year, then the overhead of having an AFSL doesn’t seem to make sense.”

The most common way these unlicensed accountants planned to deal with the issue of licensing is by referring clients to external planners or using a digital advice provider.

Mr Hennington said the survey results indicate that accountants have a good understanding of when they need to have statements of advice for transactions. 

"On average they get involved with about 14 of these types of transactions per year and they believe they need 14 statements of advice per year. So what that tells me is that they know that it can't be avoided,"he said.