Important changes to the 2025 CPD program
As we move into the 2025 calendar year, the Smarter SMSF team is looking forward to delivering an exciting calendar of CPD events for our members. Throughout the year we take on feedback from surveys and other general discussions to ensure that the format and delivery of our accredited CPD remains valuable to you.
This email is to share with you some important changes to the CPD program that increases the number of accredited CPD hours in 2025 that will be available to you as a member.
A key summary of these changes for you below:
Changing Face of SMSF
Historically, this has been a quarterly update delivered in March, June, September and December each year, providing a snapshot of what’s been happening across the industry from a policy, legislative and regulatory perspective. This year, the Changing Face of SMSF (‘CFOS’) will move to a half-yearly update in early March and September, with the sessions increasing from 60 minutes to 90 minutes. There will be no change to the format and will continue to include slides and workbooks for members to work through.
Whilst the CFOS will reduce from 4 to 2 sessions, we will be building a dedicated area within the learning platform to provide regular updates on technical and regulatory issues as they come to hand. This will allow you to have access to the content in a timelier fashion and will include a combination of videos (analysis by Aaron & Tim), along with our technical commentary on the relevant topic and links to resources (e.g. consultation, rulings, etc).
CPD product webinars
Over the past 18 - 24 months, we have been running a number of webinars focused on specific SMSF topics, which concurrently provided a demonstration on how to utilise specific document(s) on the platform (e.g. risks in managing pensions, changing a fund trustee)
Whilst these topics are valuable for attendees, both technically and practically, the feedback has been why CPD hasn’t be allotted for such an event? This has predominantly been because the events included an element of product demonstration with our documents via the smarter platform. However, with changes to our ability to issue CPD hours as an accredited educator with the SMSF Association, we are now going to be making changes to the delivery of these webinars – this will result in us now awarding CPD for at least 0.5 hours when attending (for a 1-hour event). These sessions will remain free to attend (for members and non-members), however accredited CPD hours (including certificate with structured hours) will only be awarded to Smarter SMSF CPD members – it will not be available to non-members.
I note that a similar change to the awarding of accredited CPD hours for other free to attend events such as the Federal Budget will only apply to CPD members.
The benefit of this change is that the awarding of CPD hours over the calendar year for a CPD Regular or CPD Business member will increase from around 20 hours to 25+ hours p.a.
You can view the upcoming calendar of events for more details:
https://smartersmsf.com/events/
The end is near for our Malthouse family
At 30 June 2025, we will say farewell to the Malthouse family and Little Brewers Super Fund as we currently work on a new SMSF family. Our June 2025 masterclass on estate planning will be the final event with the Malthouse family.
For our SMSF Day events in March 2025 around Australia, we will be introducing attendees to the new family and the various SMSFs that will be in operation. The new family will then form part of our masterclass events for the 2025/26 financial year.
Please note that there will be no changes to the format of our masterclass events for 2025, with very positive feedback on the value that attendees get from these online events.
Education roadmap 2025
Our education focus this year will include a significant update to the SMSF essentials course, which is currently in progress, along with the highly anticipated release of the SMSF advanced course.
We are continuing to explore the use of AI with our SMSF courses and will look to expand this into other aspects of our education (e.g. webinar and masterclass materials) throughout the year.
Subscription pricing changes
Finally, I note that our CPD subscription pricing for existing members has not increased for at least 5 years. As we continue to invest in our education offering and the technology to offer solutions to our members, we will be increasing the subscription prices for existing CPD regular and CPD business clients from 1 July 2025 to the current pricing for new subscribers. You will receive an email closer to the date to advise of the specific change to your existing CPD subscription, so no further action is required by you at this time.
However, as always, if you do have any questions in respect to the above details of this email, please do not hesitate to get in contact with us.
We look forward to once again delivering a calendar of high quality SMSF education to you and your team in 2025.