Himashini Weeraratne

Partner & Head of Financial Services - Tax

Himashini has over 20 years’ providing tax advisory and compliance services to financial service providers, fund managers, managed funds, superannuation funds and their advisors. She prides herself on providing service to clients with empathy and humour.

She also has extensive experience in project managing and coordinating a diverse range of funds and superannuation funds and assisting clients with detailed knowledge of the taxation and regulatory issues affecting their industry. 

Himashini helps mid-sized financial services organisations and investment management industry by streamlining compliance processes and providing value-added services to clients, especially at Board level. She has been instrumental in risk management initiatives, policy drafting, and process enhancements, often serving as a trusted advisor for governance review projects.

Himashini is passionate about ESG and the role that tax plays in this space. Additionally, she leverages her background as a practicing solicitor in New South Wales to advocate for mutual banks. She also currently lectures at the Global Compliance Institute.

Experience:

• Extensive experience managing the coordination of compliance services (including preparation and review of tax-effect accounting calculations and disclosures) to many funds, fund managers and major superannuation funds, including working with major fund administrators and middle market such as Fund administrator
• First-hand experience in relation to the operations of a major financial services provider through secondment
• Assisting and advising clients on tax issues when transitioning from one administrator to another 
• Structuring inbound and outbound investments
• Advice on taxation of financial arrangements regime
• Review and advising clients on tax governance and risk for internal processing of systems
• Unit pricing and advising on after- tax returns on investments for fund managers and superannuation funds
• Reviewing and providing comments on tax policy documents, Product Disclosure Statements and tax statements
• Leading the development implementation for tax risk governance assessment model for financial services clients
• Working with global regulatory forums such as OECD on regulatory compliance
• Working with financial services organisations on ESG roadmaps to ensure governance is overlaying their operations
• Educating global clients via regulatory discussion forums via HMRC (UK) and the ATO (Australia) to create supportive platform for global clients on FATCA/CRS