I commenced setting up our SMSF at the start of this year, and many of you have emailed to ask me if I would continue with this series. For those interested, in part one I explained why I was just using my family accountants to set it up. In part two, I talked you through the basic process of signing authorised documents in front of witnesses.
The reason I have not been in a hurry to set up the SMSF is because the market has been truly dreadful for all the stocks I usually invest in. Currently, my superannuation is quite conservatively invested in Australian Ethical, so it just never seemed like a priority to transfer it over.
The latest development is that we have set up the SMSF bank account with. Basically, the process requires you go into the bank in person with your identification and the trust deed of the fund (plus the ABN and TFN of the fund. This has been a surprisingly slow process as the bank then needed to go through some verification process for both me and Chloe.
After a week, they have verified me and I now have access to the accounts, but for whatever reason Chloe never got a call so had to ring to progress her own verification, also they haven’t enabled her internet banking yet. We’ll have to follow that up.
Anyway, with my access looking good it is time to excitingly transfer over my superannuation from Australian Ethical Investments. Personally, I have had insurance through my Australian Ethical Superannuation for more than a decade, so I won’t close the account. Rather, I’ll just transfer most of the balance across.
My existing Super fund allows me to rollover my funds simply by logging in and filling out an online form.
However, in order to do that I’ll need an Electronic Service Address for my SMSF which is available through a number of providers. Because I don’t want to be solely responsible for the administration of our SMSF, I’d prefer if the accountants get this for me (though of course that will cost me more money). For me personally I prefer pay more money to someone else to do administration because I don’t want to make a mistake, but this is not the most economical approach.
Once I get my ESA, it should be fairly trivial to rollover my superannuation into the SMSF, at which point it will be sitting in cash. From that point, I’ll be able to set up an Interactive Brokers account, taking me one step closer to actually investing my superannuation in style.