The non-mandatory central provident fund system (the System) has been implemented since 1 January this year.  The Social Security Fund (abbreviated to FSS in Macao) today (15^th March) held a participation ceremony for the fund management entities, and affirmed the support of seven fund management entities that were the first to participate in the non-mandatory central provident fund system.

The seven fund management entities in the order of submission of applications are AIA International Limited, Fidelidade - Companhia de Seguros, S.A. (Ramo Vida), Companhia de Seguros Luen Fung Hang - Vida, S.A., China Life Insurance (Overseas) Company Limited, Sociedade Gestora de Fundos de Pensões ICBC (Macau), S.A., Sociedade Gestora de Fundos de Pensões de Macau, S.A., and MassMutual Asia Limited.  The seven fund management entities have covered more than 90% of employers who have already set up private pension plans, providing a total of 39 pension funds as the investment instruments for the contributions of the central provident fund system.  In other words, for businesses that have already set up private pension funds, if they want to participate in the non-mandatory central provident fund system in the future, most of them can be interfaced smoothly.

In his speech, Iong Kong Io, President of the Administrative Committee of the FSS, said that he hopes to continue to maintain good communication and cooperation with the fund management entities in order to help employers, employees and residents to participate in the System more easily so as to gradually increase the coverage of the non-mandatory central provident fund system, and to provide residents with further pension protection.

Iong also said, “The SAR Government has allocated funds to eligible residents for eight consecutive years.  Each person has been granted up to more than 60,000 patacas for the allocation of funds together with interest income.  Residents can use the funds to invest by participating in the joint provident fund scheme or take the initiative to participate in the individual provident fund scheme.  However, as investment involves risks, I remind residents to take the initiative to learn more about the details of the provident fund contribution schemes.  Before investment, residents must also examine the characteristics of various fund products and their own risk tolerance capability in order to make prudent financial choices.”

To enable residents to easily keep abreast of the information of various pension funds, the FSS has set up an online public information platform.  Before making investment choices, residents can first understand and compare the investment strategy, risk, performance of cumulative return and fees of each pension fund.  In addition, residents can log in to the individual accounts on the information platform using the government’s “ePass” to search for information such as the government-managed sub-account, contribution sub-account and preserved sub-account.

The government representatives attending the ceremony also included Chan Pou Wan and Un Hoi Cheng, Vice-Presidents of the Administrative Committee of the FSS, Chan Kuan I, Deputy Director of the Insurance Supervision Department of the Monetary Authority of Macao, and Ieong Iun Lai, Head of Department of Central Provident Fund System of the FSS.