EPF: the median savings of all ethnicities point to a serious need to shore up savings adequacy.

 https://theedgemalaysia.com/node/682163

Why policy takeaway is not Chinese have the most and bumiputeras the least EPF savings and income

By Cindy Yeap / The Edge Malaysia

20 Sep 2023, 02:30 pm

THE low level of retirement savings among Malay and other bumiputera private sector wage earners compared with their fellow Malaysians of Chinese and Indian ethnicity recently made headlines when lawmakers provided such numbers in parliament when arguing against more premature withdrawals of statutory retirement savings from the Employees Provident Fund (EPF).

While the median savings among EPF members of Chinese and Indian ethnicity in May 2023 were higher than that of Malays and other bumiputera, the reality is that the median EPF savings is low even among the Chinese, who make up about 24% of the provident fund’s membership.

According to EPF data, the median savings among the 3.1 million Chinese EPF members was RM47,385 as at May 2023, which works out to only RM197 per month for 20 years. That is just under one-fifth of the prevailing minimum civil service pension of RM1,000 a month — hardly enough to get by, even though the figure looks high when stacked against the median savings of RM7,078 (RM29 a month for 20 years) among the seven million Malay EPF members.

Savings adequacy is also a concern among the one million EPF members who are of Indian ethnicity, even though their median savings of RM15,985 (RM67 a month for 20 years) is above that of the median savings of RM4,579 (RM19 per month over 20 years) among the 1.4 million non-Malay bumiputera EPF members (see Table 1).

That median EPF savings of Malay members are higher than that of non-Malay bumiputera should not cloud the fact that the median savings of all ethnicities point to a serious need to shore up savings adequacy.

With only 19%, or 2.5 million, of the 13.3 million EPF members meeting the EPF’s basic savings by age, not all 3.1 million Chinese EPF members automatically have enough to retire. In short, ethnicity has scant meaning on one’s adequacy of retirement savings relative to more useful details like age, trajectory of wages, education, skills and the industries the EPF members are in.

Experts generally agree that the low level of EPF savings has much to do with low income. Rather than dwelling on ethnicity, policy action that focuses on upskilling and creating higher-income jobs and raising economic complexity should result in greater productivity and higher wages for all Malaysians.