Superannuation statistics

Both the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) and the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) have recently released superannuation statistics.  The APRA statistics are up to March 2018 while the ATO statistics are up to the 2015/16 financial year.  This does not mean that the ATO is less diligent than APRA - it merely reflects the fact that the ATO statistics are mainly derived from the annual returns lodged by self managed superannuation funds and these returns can be lodged up to 8 months after the end of the relevant financial year.

So far as APRA is concerned - total super assets as at 31 March 2018 was estimated to be $2,600 billion - or about 150% of Australia’s Gross Domestic Product.  SMSFs still represent the largest segment by asset value ($712b) with the Industry Funds sector being the second largest by value ($599b).  The rationalisation of the APRA regulated sector continues with a reduction in the number of corporate funds (from 27 to 24 over the 12 months to 31 March 2018) and also a reduction in the number of Retail Funds (from 126 to 123 over the same period).  Rationalisation in the Industry Fund sector seems to have stagnated with no reduction in the number of funds (remaining at 40) over the same period.

So far as the ATO is concerned - over 90% of all SMSFs have only one or two members while the median assets per SMSF was $641,983 (as at 30 June 2016) and the median assets per member was $362,280 (also as at 30 June 2016).  The ATO also estimated that the total LRBA debt, as a percentage of total SMSF assets, was about 3.2% (as at 30 March 2018 -$23 billion debt while total value of assets was $712 billion).