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Darin Tyson-Chan is a journalist with InvestorDaily, a Morningstar publication.

Loans or financial assistance made to members caused the greatest compliance problems for self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF) trustees from 2005 up to 30 June 2010, according to tax office statisics.

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) report, entitled "Self-managed superannuation funds: A statistical overview", is a continuation of the statistical analysis of the sector released during the Stronger Super review, this time containing an additional year's data.

It showed loans or financial assistance to members accounted for 20 per cent of reported contraventions between 2005 and 30 June 2010.

The in-house assets rule was the next most significant compliance issue for SMSF trustees, making up 17 per cent of all contraventions, while separation of assets represented 14 per cent.

However, in-house assets and asset separation presented larger concerns from a valuation perspective, with each category representing 25.4 per cent and 28.3 per cent of the total asset value of contraventions over the period respectively.

From an investment perspective, SMSF members maintained their preference for direct investing for the five years to 30 June 2009, with 76 per cent of the sector assets reported as directly invested.

Investing via managed investment structures and trusts made up 20 per cent of invested funds.

Diversification proved to be more of a problem for smaller funds, with 35 per cent of SMSFs with an asset balance lower than $50,000 more likely to hold only one asset class over the half decade.

Conversely, less than 7 per cent of funds with assets over $500,000 held only one class of asset.

Overall, just below 11 per cent of SMSFs reported allocating their entire asset balances to one asset class at 30 June 2009.