“[The client might say] I don’t have enough cash to do a recontribution strategy, the fund is fully invested, and I don’t have the cash to take out and put back in again,” she said speaking to attendees at the Heffron Super Intensive Day.

“Technically [in that situation], you could do a recontribution via an in specie transfer of assets. So if the fund has got a share portfolio, you could in specie some shares out and then back in again, but I would never do that because it's too much hassle. I would convince them to sell the shares and use the cash to do the transaction.”

However, there may be another option, she said, if total super balance isn’t a problem.

“If the balance is low enough that you’ve got no trouble making contributions you can actually switch the transactions around, which might sound counterintuitive but there’s actually nothing to stop you,” she said.

Ms Heffron gave an example of Joan, who has $330,000 in personal cash available.

“There’s nothing to stop her putting that in and then taking money out of her original pension [so] a recontribution in reverse. It achieves the same thing, it just reverses the transactions,” she explained.

“She needs to be smart about her pensions though. She’d need to make sure that her original super had already been turned into a pension before she put the new money in.”