May 2022
06May

UK. State pension to hit £10,600 as triple lock returns – up to £1,000 extra income next year

The State Pension could rise by almost £1,000 to more than £10,600 a year as inflation rockets past 10 percent and the triple lock is restored. Read also UK. Less than third of schemes regularly track individual fund performance This would be the single biggest increase ever and could see the new State Pension top £10,600 a year. However, those who retired before April 6, 2016, on the old State Pension will get a smaller increase. Yesterday, the Bank of England forecast...

May 6, 2022
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06May

Half of Hong Kong women face retirement income challenges

Only one in three women say they are confident in their ability to make their pension contributions, whereas 40% of men say the same, according to the Fidelity’s Global Women & Money Study 2022. Read also Millennials Will Make Impact Investing Mainstream Due to the lack of confidence in financial planning, 46% of the surveyed Hong Kong women are worried they are unprepared financially for retirement, while 43% of men felt the same. Read also On the path to bigger income in...

May 6, 2022
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October 2021
14Oct

Hong Kong government proposal for residents to convert pensions into annuities ‘absurd’ if made mandatory, labour minister says

A Hong Kong government proposal to encourage residents to convert their pensions into annuities would be “absurd” if made mandatory, the city’s labour minister said on Thursday. Secretary for Labour and Welfare Law Chi-kwong said that while studying the proposal was necessary, making it mandatory to convert Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) pension plans into annuities was never going to happen in Hong Kong. “If anyone just thought about it, forcing everyone in Hong Kong to switch to an annuity is absurd,...

October 14, 2021
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07Oct

Hong Kong Policy Address: MPF offsetting – allowing employers to dip into pensions – will be scrapped

Hong Kong’s controversial Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) offsetting mechanism will be scrapped, Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced on Wednesday in her policy address. The mechanism allows employers to dip into workers’ pension funds to make long-service and severance payments, a system which has come under fire for years from unions and fundholders themselves. The offsetting will be fully scrapped as early as 2025, when the launch of an electronic management platform for the MPF (eMPF) is completed. According to a government source,...

October 7, 2021
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September 2021
08Sep

Pension withdrawals by departing Hong Kong residents hit $270 mln in second quarter

Residents leaving Hong Kong withdrew HK$2.095 billion ($270 million) from Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) pension accounts in the second quarter, up 111.6% from the same period in 2020. A sweeping security law imposed on Hong Kong in June 2020, aimed at anything Beijing regards as subversion, secession or terrorism, prompted residents of the city to move tens of billions of dollars to other countries including Canada, where thousands hope to forge a new future. read more A total of 8,000 claims...

September 8, 2021
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July 2021
26Jul

Coronavirus exposes cracks in Hongkongers’ retirement planning as health care costs and weak savings dominate worries, EIU survey finds

The Covid-19 pandemic has left most working adults in Hongkong fearing for their financial position and readiness for retirement, according to a survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit commissioned by HSBC Life Insurance. Read also UK. Triple lock is far from the biggest pension issue on government’s plate Some 98 per cent of Hongkongers expressed worries about ageing in the city, with medical and health care costs, insufficient savings and income security dominating their top concerns. Less than a quarter of...

July 26, 2021
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09Jul

Hong Kong’s pension fund posts 4.5 per cent investment gain in first half, but policy and regulatory challenges lie ahead

Hongkongers probably earned the most returns in two years from their US$154 billion pension scheme in the first half of this year from a rally in global stocks. These winnings could be eroded by policy tightening in the US and a tech sector crackdown at home by China. Read also ESG: Fad or Future? The Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) generated HK$52.6 billion (US$6.8 billion) of investment income in the January to June period, according to calculations by the Post based on...

July 9, 2021
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June 2021
08Jun

Hong Kong’s departing residents withdrew $248.9 million in pension funds in Q1

Hong Kong residents leaving the city for good withdrew a total of HK$1.931 billion ($248.92 million) from their Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) pension accounts in the first quarter of 2021, up 49.1% from the same period a year earlier. A total of 7,700 claims were made during the first quarter. That compared with 7,600 claims during the same period in 2020, when HK$1.295 billion was withdrawn, data from the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority released late on Monday showed. (https://bit.ly/3geyWKC). Read...

June 8, 2021
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January 2021

20Jan

Hong Kong’s jobless rate hits 16-year high

Hong Kong's jobless rate hit a 16-year high in the October-December period as the fourth wave of the COVID-19 outbreak further compounded the labor market situation, official data showed Tuesday. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose from 6.3 percent in the September-November period to 6.6 percent in the October-December period, the Census and Statistics Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government said in a press release. Meanwhile, the underemployment rate remained unchanged at 3.4 percent, showed...

January 20, 2021
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September 2019

05Sep

Hong Kong. Legacy Trust have launched a crypto pension plan

The Hong Kong based company Legacy Trust has opened a pension plan based on digital assets. In what could be a world first the company have started a voluntary pension plan open to employers and the self-employed for which contributions and the underlying portfolio can include digital assets. Vincent Chok, CEO of Legacy Trust said: "Investors are moving beyond speculation — they want to use digital assets and bring them into a diversified portfolio," he then added "We...

September 5, 2019
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