Understanding Private Retirement Schemes

With the increasing life expectancy and cost of living, Malaysians are living longer today than ever and ensuring we have sufficient funds to maintain a comfortable standard of living for the balance of our lives thus gaining more importance.

The introduction of PRS aims to provide an additional pillar to support the retirement needs of Malaysians. A PRS is a voluntary long-term investment scheme designed to help individuals accumulate savings for retirement. It complements the mandatory contributions made to EPF. It also helps the self-employed to build up their savings, and encourages employers to provide extra benefits for their workers beyond their mandatory contribution. Each PRS will include a range of retirement funds that individuals may choose to invest in based on their own retirement needs, goals and risk appetite. Such funds are managed in a way that is consistent with the objective of building savings for retirement with a prudent spread of risk.

Diversification: Investors’ contributions will be pooled for the purchase of a diversified portfolio of stocks, fixed income securities as well as other permissible assets which yields returns at lower risks compared with investing directly in any individual investment such as stocks.

Professional management: The funds are managed by professional fund managers with the expertise and resources to manage the assets of the funds.

Ease of transactions: The funds do not require cumbersome administrative paperwork or record keeping on investors’ part in managing a range of investments.

Enjoy tax reliefs: Individuals (both self-employed and employees) are allowed to claim a tax relief on the amount of contribution made to the funds subject to a maximum of RM3,000 per annum, or any other amount as may be determined by the relevant authorities from time to time. Additionally, employers are also allowed to claim a tax deduction on contributions to PRS made on behalf of their employees up to 19% of employees’ remuneration.

Income of the fund is exempt from Malaysian income tax: Since income of the fund is exempt from Malaysian income tax, the income distributed from the funds to you should be exempted from Malaysian income tax as well.

For more information about PRS, investors can visit the website of:

• Securities Commission of Malaysia and
• Private Pension Administrator Malaysia