Hi,

With some focus coming onto this at the moment there seems to be a belief auditors should simply go onto registries to check holdings (at our time of course). I know this is a common practice but as auditors are we legally within our rights to take a HIN Number off a statement and log in? To me this is a private client portal where changes can actually be made like updating a TFN, addresses, mailing preferences etc, so interestingly I wonder if the auditors being sued in the Caddick case may argue this point when the suggestion is made they should have done registry checks.

Perhaps we really need something in our engagement letters that the client authroises us to access share registries?

Or the client should do the role of a Trustee and fulfil the 'Self Managed' component of their SMSF and check for themself and provide the information.