Accountants have long provided both accounting expertise and investment advice to Self Managed Super Funds, but that era will come to an end on June 30, 2018.

That when the accountant exemption to the 2016 financial advice licensing reforms expires. From then on, it will be illegal for accountants to advise their clients on investment decisions unless they hold a licence in their own right.

As a result, accountants are now grappling with how to retain the business of setting up, structuring and maintaining their clients' SMSFs while not saying anything that looks, sounds or smells like advice.

Andrew Ward, managing director of online platform Selfwealth, believes his social network for investors and trading solution solves the problem.

Selfwealth is a peer-to-peer community where members, using an alias, share general information on their portfolios and trades, without disclosing their size or value.

Brokerage is set at a flat fee of $9.50, regardless of the size of the trade, with no commissions charged.

Selfwealth operates under a General Advice licence, but any advice springs from the collective intelligence of the members.

Our point of difference is that we're not an adviser, planner or trust. we're not even a financial product, says Andrew Ward.

We created Selfwealth to allow any type of investor to structure and manage their own portfolios without paying huge fees. All decisions are self-directed through the solution.

Ward understands the dilemma facing SMSF investors, who enjoy the sense of control that comes with running your own fund, but may not have the time or expertise to make informed choices.

SMSF investors say they want to do it themselves, but they actually want someone to do it for them, he says.

Accountants are constantly being asked, how do I invest if I don't want to pay a financial planner?

But now accountants are walking a tightrope and SMSFs are out on their own.

DIY investors can glean ideas from the media, newsletters, family and friends, but these can be incomplete or flawed, and the tactics employed by large funds are often inappropriate.

The online community currently has 7,000 members, of whom about 3,000 are SMSFs.

Selfwealth members can benchmark their portfolios against like-minded peers. SMSF investors can measure their performance against other SMSFs and see what they are achieving, says Ward.

Selfwealth calculates two objective diagnostic measures of each portfolio, a SafetyRating and a WealthCheck. These can highlight problems many SMSF investors don't even know they have “ lack of diversification and relative underperformance.

The SafetyRating measures the diversification of a portfolio and assigns it a 1-5 star rating and a score out of 40.

The WealthCheck measures the portfolio overall health, combining its SafetyRating, its performance compared with other members' portfolios, and an independent valuation of holdings using Thomson Reuters stock analysis tools.

This calculation produces a WealthCheck score on a scale of A+ to F.

We know the valuation of the stock and the weighting, and can apply a valuation metric to each portfolio, even if it has 33 stocks in it, says Ward.

SMSF investors tend to gravitate to things they know “ the banks, Telstra, Woolworths. They end up sitting on five or six stocks. The average holding is eight stocks.

The SafetyRating encourages people to diversify. Our WealthCheck drives people to Exchange-Traded Funds so they can get access to the US stock market, fixed interest and property.

SMSF investors often think they are better investors than they really are, he says, and it a reality check when they see the returns that are possible.

What the point of beating the market if 90 per cent of investors are beating you?

New members are offered the opportunity to set up a Target Portfolio based on the top performing stocks and ETFs held by members, or to custom design their portfolio on the basis of their personal research.

The Selfwealth process often exposes a common SMSF mistake “ a tendency to concentrate on dividend-paying stocks and ignore growth stocks.

SMSF investors forget that an income stream is not the same as a company that pays a good income, says Ward.

When you're in the drawdown phase you're in a CGT-free zone. Income and capital gains are treated the same for tax purposes.

Selfwealth has big plans for its own future. By the end of 2017, it expects to be offering access to the US market, which also gives access to the many Japanese stocks listed on the NYSE.

Andrew Ward hopes Selfwealth will prove useful for accountants, especially at a time when many are planning to retire and the market value of accounting practices has been falling.

At the moment, accountants fall into four groups, he says. There are those who want nothing to do with financial advice, those who are licensed themselves, those who have a licensed planner in-house, and those who refer planning business away to outsiders.

Selfwealth can solve the licensing conundrum by giving clients the means to make their own investment decisions while still relying on their accountants for the legal and accounting support they need.