TakeAways from Private Retirement Scheme (PRS)

This post is specifically for Malaysian - our PM launched a new voluntary private retirement scheme (i.e. PRS) for all Malaysian! You can check the announcement here. Well, I think this  a good news. So, let's see what are my key takeaways from this announcement?


Key Takeaways

• You may ask what is the difference as compared to EPF? The obvious one, EPF is mandatory and PRS is voluntary.

• Tax relief is up to RM 3K as compared to EPF is RM 6K. Well, it is additional. What it means is if your tax bracket is 26%, you will able to save up to RM780

• Contribution frequency is flexible where else for EPF is monthly.  I think this is very similar to mutual fund investment where you can also setup a monthly investment if you want to.  

• You can only apply this PRS through approved PRS providers. They are AmInvestment Management Sdn Bhd, American International Assurance Bhd, CIMB-Principal Asset Management Bhd, Hwang INvestment Management Bhd, ING Funds Bhd, Manulife Unit Trust Bhd, Public Mutual Fund and RHB Investment Management Sdn Bhd.

• You can choose what funds to invest but I guess that is still based on the term and conditions of the PRS providers above. You should check with your agents. For EPF, you only have partial freedom. Remember you can opt for withdraw the money from EPF for investing in mutual funds?

• Withdrawal is similar to EPF, the entire fund in your PRS can be withdrawn when you reach your retirement age (55 years old - used to be 60), you die or you migrate to another country. For partial withdrawal for per-retirement, there will be 8% tax penalty. This is different from EPF where withdrawals can be made without penalty for specific purpose (e.g. pay for housing loan and education). Anyway, for detail you should check with your PRS provider to confirm. 

I believe the details on how to apply this PRS will be communicated by the PRS providers soon. For example, if you're using Public Mutual and I will expecting your agent will be contacting you about this scheme. If not, you can approach them assuming you're interested to apply.

I think I will go for this as it can help me on the tax relief. Will you? One risk that you must understand is the fund that you invest in may be losing money. To minimize such risk, I think the PRS providers will mostly offer those low risk funds rather than aggressive funds. So overall, I think this is safe to invest.

Should I worry about retirement?

Have you every thought of how much money that is needed for your retirement? If no, probably you want to start thinking about it now. This is an interesting article I get from “thestar” newspaper: Is savings enough for retirement?

Apparently from the survey by AXA Retirement scope 2010, Malaysian seems pretty aware of the amount of money that they will get after retirement (i.e. 54%) as compared to the rest of the countries except India is ranked number one. This is a good sign as least you still know exactly how much you will earn or get after your retirement.

On the other hand, I’m not sure if this considered to be good news or it simply means other countries have taken care of their citizen’s retirement therefore they don’t really care about it? Countries such as UK and Australia, you can see that they don’t really care about it. I think this is mainly due to the fact that their governments have taken care of their retirement. That is also one of the reasons why people like to migrate to Australia. :)

Having said so, if you look at the data, majority of people around the world still do not really give a damn about retirement. Because more than half the population do not aware at all how much they will earn after retirement. “Who cares? There are still plenty of time!” - this is the most common reason why people still do not want to take it seriously. But I afraid by the time you start thinking about retirement, it is probably too late…

Let’s look at this another data for Malaysian’s perception on whether their retirement income is sufficient or not. As you can see, (35% + 2%) = 37% think their retirement income is sufficient. It used to 62% in 2007 and now this drops dramatically.


Looking for Solutions?

• If you ever want to know the amount of retirement fund that you need for your retirement, you can look my previous example, how one can calculate the retirement fund: 10 Years Retirement Plan is Possible.

• Once you know exactly how much is needed for your retirement, you have 2 solutions. First solution is to earn more and the second solution is to spend less. You can check out my previous post: 2 Solutions to Retire Rich.

Discussion: Since we’re now in the trend of getting more and more people neglecting retirement planning, how should we fix this? Should we increase the awareness of the people OR should the government take care of it so that we all do not need to worry about retirement (like what Australia and UK do)? What do you think?