EPF declared 5.70% dividend for 2016

The Employees Provident Fund (EPF, a.k.a. KWSP) has just declared the dividend rate for financial year 2016 to be 5.70%, which is 11% lower than the 6.40% dividend declared for 2015 (last year).

Calculation: (5.70-6.40)/6.40 = -0.70/6.40 = -11%

This is the 2nd year of dividend decline since the historical highest dividend payout of 6.75% declared for 2014.

If you have already registered as an EPF i-Akaun member to access your EPF account detail with their online service, you can login to your online account now and check the actual amount of dividend in RM added to your EPF account by viewing your 2016 online statement.

With this dividend rate, it seems that those who have withdrawn their EPF Account II savings to reduce their housing loan during 2016 might be regreted to do so, as the effective mortgage rate is generally lower than 5.70% in 2016, due to a lower housing loan financing rate along the year (around 4.35% offered by most banks).

If you have withdrawn your EPF Account I savings for investment in unit trust or fund, your fund manager has outperformed EPF if your 2016 ROI in the fund is greater than 5.70%. Otherwise, you might want to meet up with your unit trust agent or fund manager to find out what's wrong.

Note that in 2016, EPF has recognized a net impairment amounting of RM8.17 billion, compared with RM3.07 billion in 2015 to reflect lower equity prices (meaning, paper lost in share market)!

If you had gain money (had positive return) in share market during 2016, you were indeed doing better than the fund managers of EPF in share market investing.