EPF declared 6.75% dividend for 2014

The Employees Provident Fund (EPF, a.k.a. Kumpulan Wang Simpanan Pekerja, KWSP) Board, with the approval of the Minister of Finance, has just announced a dividend rate of 6.75% and RM39.08 billion gross investment income for financial year ended 31 December 2014, which is an increase of 11.66% compared with RM35.00 billion in 2013.

The 6.75% dividend amounted to a total payout of RM36.66 billion where RM5.41 billion was required to pay every one per cent of dividend rate for 2014. This was 10.53% higher compared with RM4.91 billion paid for every one per cent dividend rate for 2013, in tandem with the rise in contributors’ savings.

 

EPF global investments, forming 23% of total assets, had contributed 33% towards their total income for 2014.

 

The 2014 gross investment income was mainly driven by Equities in the domestic and global markets covering both emerging and developed countries. The asset class recorded an investment income of RM22.91 billion in 2014, up 17.37% compared with RM19.52 billion in 2013, and contributed 58.63% to the total gross investment income in 2014. Almost half of the income of the equity investment is derived from EPF’s global portfolios.

Majority of the EPF’s investment assets were placed in low risk fixed income instruments as this asset class provided a stable stream of income in the long run.

 

Loans and Bonds contributed RM7.57 billion in income, compared with RM7.51 billion in 2013. This rise was attributed to the performance of the global portfolios by both internal and external fund managers. Malaysian Government Securities and Equivalents recorded RM6.59 billion in income, registering a rise of 6.14%, compared with 2013. Meanwhile, Money Market Instruments posted an income of RM619.65 million.

 

Real Estate and Infrastructure contributed RM1.39 billion in investment income in 2014. This inflation-linked asset class, which the EPF has started invested in since 2010, has over the years been showing encouraging performance and is a 22.31% increase from 2013.
 

As at 31 December 2014, the EPF’s total investment assets stood at RM636.53 billion, up 7.91% from RM589.87 billion in 2013.

 

 

Updated the BIOS of my Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro laptop to Version 41

Lenovo has just released a new BIOS update for Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro laptop (version 76CN41WW) on 20 January 2015.

I have just updated the BIOS of my Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro laptop from Version 38 to this latest Version 41.

You can download the latest BIOS update utility of Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro from their support website here.

The Lenovo BIOS Update Utility requires the laptop to be plugged on to the AC power supply before it proceed with the BIOS updating action.

The new BIOS will be flashed with the InsydeFlash utility from Windows 8.1. After that, the system will reboot itself, and the BIOS update will be performed.

After the BIOS update completed, the laptop will reboot itself again and back to the Windows login screen. This is much better than the previous Version 38 update which ended in a blank screen with keyboard backlit on.

There is no data lost for this BIOS update. Even the BIOS settings and passwords remain after the update.

The most effective way to contact with Maybank customer service is Facebook

If you want to contact with Maybank customer service to get help regarding your banking enquiry or problem with them, what would you do?

Go to the Customer Service page of Maybank2u website and fill in the form? You are very likely to end up with an error message after you clicked the Submit button, and your message is not sent.

Make a phone call to their customer service hotline number? You are very likely to be kept waiting for a long period of time, and need to be extremely patient to wait for somebody to pick up your call.

Email to them? I couldn't find any official customer service email published in their current Maybank2u website.

I finally found the most effective way, which is to write message to their official Facebook account. You can do so by sending private message to Maybank with this link: https://www.facebook.com/messages/Maybank

I got their Facebook PM reply within 15 minutes after I sent my message to them, and they also responded to each subsequent interaction within 15 minutes too. I got my problem solved after a few message sending and reply. The problem solved within 1 hour from my 1st message to them.

Well, if you are not still attended after PM to them, you can try leaving a comment in their Facebook page. The URL is: https://www.facebook.com/Maybank