Slow start seen for PRS
Fund managers say more education and promotion needed
Fund managers say more education and promotion needed on private retirement scheme.
PETALING JAYA: Despite competition heating up among private retirement funds, it is expected to take off at a slow pace as more education and promotion are needed to boost the take-up rate of these funds, according to fund managers.
To date three fund houses – CIMB Principal Asset Management Bhd, Manulife Asset Management Services Bhd and Hwang Investment Management Bhd – have launched a total of 17 private retirement funds under the private retirement scheme (PRS). Eight fund houses are granted licences in April by the Securities Commission as PRS providers.
Areca Capital CEO Danny Wong told StarBiz he expected a slow start for these funds as they were voluntary, flexible and discretionary retirement savings or the third pillar under the world bank’s 2005 Five Pillar Pension Model.
“Many tax payers are also EPF contributors. As such I expect a very small number from this group of working adults to consider PRS given that the EPF’s return is quite reasonable historically, whereas PRS is not guaranteed and does not have any track record. There are non-EPF members who will consider this scheme but more time and publicity are needed to promote it,’’ he added.
Based on unofficial estimates, Wong said there were about six million registered individual tax payers of which less than two million pay taxes. “Let’s say the PRS manage to attracts 10% of these actual tax payers i.e. 200,000 potential PRS investors, and each of them on average contributes RM3,000 to benefit from the tax relief, hence the potential market size is RM600mil,” he said.
Hwang Investment Management Bhd (Hwang IM) chief product officer Steve Lim said it was looking at a three-year horizon for the contribution momentum to pick up and for the public to warm up to the idea of contributing to a privately-managed and voluntary retirement scheme.
This was an entirely new scheme that was less than a year old, he said, adding that for starters, any form of investing required education, understanding and confidence, and PRS was no different.
Manulife Asset Management Services Bhd CEO Edward Ooi felt that since PRS was new to the market, hence education and awareness building were crucial to ensure that Malaysians fully understand its mechanism as well as gain sufficient savings for a more comfortable retirement lifestyle. He expected PRS take-up to gradually build up over a period of time as awareness
for retirement planning grew.
A higher tax relief is necessary to make this scheme more appealing, according to Wong. Currently, individuals are granted tax relief of up to RM3,000, while employers are provided tax deduction on contributions to PRS made on behalf of their employees above the statutory rate and up to 19% of employees remuneration.
With the escalating inflation rate, he said an investment scheme should be one that yields better-than-inflation rate.
Lim said ideally, the tax relief should be more to kick-start the process in attracting contributors, noting that for now many would contribute up to the RM3,000 level to benefit from the tax relief and would not see the benefit in putting away more.
However, he hoped the Government would consider increasing the tax relief since it would benefit the Malaysian ageing population.