At some point, every practice owner asks the same question, what happens to my clients when I step back and/or look to sell my practice?
For many, that question gets answered by a sale. You find a buyer, negotiate a price, and move on. But if a meaningful part of your practice is SMSF, selling the book is only part of the answer. The real question is more personal, who looks after the SMSF clients you’ve managed for years, and how well will they be looked after?
Two paths
When it comes to your clients with a SMSF, you generally have two options.
- You can sell that part of the book along with the rest of the practice and hope the buyer treats the transition the way you would have.
- You can partner with a SMSF service provider before you get to that point, so the handover has already happened quietly in the background, long before your date is even set.
Neither path is wrong. But they lead to very different experiences for the clients who trusted you with their retirement savings who you worked so hard for.
Why partnering changes, the equation
A specialist SMSF service provider, the kind that already takes care of the behind the scenes tasks for practices, can take over as a Support Team, Administrator and Tax Agent for the funds directly. Once in place and as the relationship already exists, the transition doesn’t have to wait for a sale, or happen under pressure the moment you decide to step back. It’s the difference between calling a client to say “I’m moving on, here’s who’s taking over” and being able to say “Nothing about your fund is changing, you already know the people looking after it.”
What if:
- Your SMSF expert and administrator leaves without warning
- A sale falls through after you’ve already told clients you’re retiring
- The buyer you do find has no plan for SMSF clients at all?
Richard Carr, “We saw this play out recently at SuperConcepts. A licensee had built its SMSF offering around a single in-house support team managing every client’s fund. When that team left the business, there was no fall back in place. The licensee had to move quickly, transferring every fund in bulk to our specialist support team just to keep things running. It worked well because of our scale and ability to transition efficiently, but if not for that it may have caused service levels to fall, relationships to become strained and most importantly, could have been avoided.”
It helps even if you do sell
Fortunately, partnering with a SMSF service provider does not just solve the “what if I don’t sell?” question. It also makes your BAU experience prior to that point and the transition process much smoother.
A potential buyer looking at your practice has to factor in every moving part they will inherit, including how SMSF support is handled. If that support already sits with a dependable specialist, there is nothing for the buyer to untangle or migrate. The SMSF support is portable, it stays where it is, doing what it has always done, no matter what you decide to do, offering flexibility and peace of mind.
That is one less thing to negotiate, one less thing to risk getting wrong in a handover, and one more reason your business looks attractive to buy enabling you to pivot effectively.
What this looks like in the real world
None of this requires you to change how you work today. The specialist SMSF support team at SuperConcepts sits behind your practice for as long as you are running it, handling the SMSF support and administration obligations under your own brand. The difference only shows up when you step back or sell providing significant portability. By then the handover’s already done. No scrambling to move hundreds of funds, no clients left to fend for themselves.
Your clients keep being looked after by people who already know their fund. You get to step back or sell, knowing that part of the practice will be looked after capably and comprehensively.
Ask yourself the question now
“Do I know how I want my clients to be treated when I retire or sell?”
You don’t need an exit date to think about this. The practices who handle this well are usually the ones who set it up well before they need it, not the ones improvising once a buyer or a retirement date is on the table.
So, before you plan how to sell your book, it is worth answering a simple question, have you planned for who looks after your SMSF clients, or just assumed it’ll sort itself out.
Richard Carr has been involved in the SMSF industry since its origins in the early 1990s as a fund auditor after which he has spent over 25 years working with Accountants and Financial Advisors helping support and grow their practices.
You can contact Richard on 0425 735 259 and richard.carr@superconcepts.com.au to discuss how best to support your practice with SuperConcepts’ leading SMSF platform SuperMate.