While the growth rate over the past five years for smaller SMSF firms administering between 25 to 100 SMSFs was very strong at around 20 per cent, increasing the size of the firm was not a primary focus for these businesses, said Mr Bungard.

“At the smaller end, there aren’t a lot of firms that aren’t necessarily looking for growth, but the interesting thing is that at the upper end of the scale, we see very uneven, lumpy growth and part of the reason for that is that a lot of the larger firms are trying to grow via acquisition,” he said.

“What we see when that happens is they’ll make the acquisition and there’ll be a period where they basically have indigestion, where it takes a while to actually get through that acquisition and get back to growing the business again in a streamlined way.”

The acquisition of another business can be a very slow sales cycle according to Mr Bungard, particularly if it’s a larger firm that’s being acquired, and it’s also quite costly.

“It also means that from an organisation point of view when you suddenly bring on thousands of funds you really have to try and reinvent your business,” he said.