The investment strategy your fund is audited against.

Yes. Every SMSF must prepare, implement and regularly review a written investment strategy, and the auditor checks both that it exists and that the fund's actual investments match it. It is not a formality - it is one of the trustee obligations the fund is audited against every year.

The regulations require trustees to have regard to risk and likely return, diversification, liquidity and the fund's ability to pay benefits when they fall due, and whether to hold insurance for members. In practice, a strategy that recites those headings without saying anything about this particular fund is the version auditors query. It should read like a decision about your fund, not a template with a name at the top.

Regularly, and at least annually - though the more useful trigger is events rather than dates. A large purchase, a member starting a pension, a member joining or leaving, a significant change in markets: each is a reason to look again and record that you did. Reviewing it and concluding no change is needed is a valid review, provided it is documented.

It can, and funds that own a single commercial property often do. What the rules require is that trustees have considered diversification and the risks of concentration, and documented why the fund is structured that way and how it will still meet its obligations. A concentrated fund with a reasoned strategy is in a very different position from a concentrated fund with a generic one.

Because a lender funding property inside super is lending to a fund whose written strategy has to contemplate the purchase. If the strategy does not mention direct property, or the liquidity position cannot survive a vacancy, the lender will find it. Getting the strategy right before an application is one of the more common reasons an SMSF loan runs smoothly, or does not.

We can advise on it as part of an advice engagement - the asset allocation, the liquidity position, and how a purchase fits alongside everything else. We do not hand out templates, because a document that specifies a particular fund's investments is advice about that fund, and it should be given as advice with the responsibility that carries.