Hence the number of 1xxK people have more than 1m seems a tad too low. There should be many mid level executives should be pulling easily 20k pm onward.

Everytime EPF release the contributors stat, I’m like can’t be so few….

talk only lah, i dont believe management executive makan gaji can get so high salary...RM50k 100k sorry lah...
just ask those working at your bank branch you know already.

those earning 100k and above are only the top few

management susah lah...
go professional
those with special skillset
then yes i agree makan gaji with big fat salary.RM50k and above

bank manager susah.

Depends on company and industry. Based on personal experiences that is what I'm seeing.

20k onward is regular thing for these mid 30s. If go to big tech, even more. By the time hit 50 as head of department, not even C, we see regularly 30k onward.

no lah, just concerned such detailed sharing. I don't see the regulars doing that. It's just like watching a person running red light, the rest act indifferent or encourage. I think certain std btw kopitiam n forum. Haha I guess the line gone blur, nevertheless, ....hmmm, sorry to judge, quite insecure character?

which industry are you refering to? locale? size and type corp?
I feel its a bit low for real HOD posts if its in KL and a large mnc like corp

30k onward la... And these are minimum....I know Mxxbank L4 HOD are making minimum 45k excludes perks/allowances and stock options etc. you can presume their C at L2 is at least twice thrice as much.

The point is not how high or low, the key point is that these folks will hit few X millions in EPF by the time they are 50.

So back to the stats release from EPF always sounded way too few

This post has been edited by gamenoob: Oct 8 2025, 10:14 PM

Ah ok… yeah, the numbers you mentioned do tally with what I believe to be the current ballpark.



Back to the EPF stats... just thinking out loud here, for discussion’s sake.

We know roughly 1% (around 90K) of active members have over RM1 million in their accounts, out of about 9 million active members.

Let’s sanity-check that using Maybank as an example.
It has around 25K staff in Malaysia. Let’s see how many might realistically break the RM1 million mark:

- 1 CEO
- up to 20 C-suite
- Each C-suite can have up to 10 HODs : ~200
- Each HOD might have 1 to 3 top performers : ~200 to 600
- Maybe 40 or so branch managers with high pay

That’s roughly between 500–900 people (and frankly this is most probably an overcount).
(900 x 360K avg annual salary = 324m already)

If these are mostly people in their 40s-50s with long tenures and steady EPF contributions, they’d likely have more than 1m in EPF.

So 700 out of 25,000 = ~2.8%.
EPF’s figure says 1%. Not wildly far off... especially considering Maybank is a large, high-paying corporate with its top earners concentrated in KL (at least vs other industries, SMEs, factories, smaller firms, outside of Klang valley, etc)
If anything, that reinforces how skewed the national average is... maybank is a better paymaster already, and even there, only 3%...


what do you have in mind when it comes to % of EPF millionaires vs the current 1% by epf stats?

These many mid level execs making 20K...probably have undeclared income, that explains why the EPF contributors stats don't reflect high figures.

I'm not surprised. How many really reach to that level? There are also some getting compensation mainly in stocks/allowances, thus no EPF. So he might be drawing 20K base but top up the perks then getting near 50-100K

Except there will not be so many HOD or high pay branch manager
~3% still more than 1% from EPF by a lot.

This post has been edited by jasontoh: Oct 9 2025, 11:10 AM

I wont say hard, just you don't need / get that many. I pull close to the 50k u mentioned, and I can easily say there should be 50 people that earns more than me. And that is just 1 company which is not even among the biggest in MY.

So if 1 company gives your roughly 50 pax earning above 50k, 50 companies will give you 2,500 people d. This is not including those making 20-30k.

yeah... branch managers or generic/junior HoDs (which last time I like to call them "fake" HoDs... cos these only have title, no authority... In many large firms, they can have Heads reporting to Head to real HoD...) are many, but not paid as high.... go to a random CIMB branch and find out the branch head's pay... could be not even near 10K even..


And true, 3% vs 1% is still a big gap. That’s exactly where the mismatch comes in. Comparing Maybank to the overall EPF base isn't really apples to apples.
A big bank like Maybank probably skews higher, and heavier KL concentration. no way the ratio will look worse than the EPF’s national 1%.

(anecdotal: so many old and young kept on claiming banking staffs are well paid... must be better than national average rite? lol)

Indeed bank staff earning higher than the national average.

Wow ngl these are really impressive numbers! I am older than you but I dare say I don't even reach your 10% 😂

Are you ok to share what industry you are in? I assume you started your investment journey very early, which investment did you start off with? I assume is properties from the looks of it?

Thanks!

thanks for this detailed breakdown.
i was about to do some similar assumptions to test the numbers but you did a solid job. and i can see you were clearly pretty generous with your assumptions to derive to the 2.8%

many people do not realise that maybank (which is an excellent reference) is not the normal company among all the companies out there. if we take 100% of small, medium and large companies combined as benchmark of 100%, am sure maybank again falls within only like the 5% bracket of companies. the other 95% are likely not able to reward staff at such remuneration with only a handful that best them.

https://data.gov.my/dashboard/income-taxation
refer to this.
only RM33.8bil collested from income tax from slightly over 4 mil people paying. that's only approx RM8k/person average.

https://theedgemalaysia.com/article/cover-s...number-proposed
only 9k people earning above rm1mil

This post has been edited by kochin: Oct 9 2025, 02:13 PM

My earlier comments not about absolute high pay numbers but rather even earning at 4k from 25 yrs old at 5% EPF annual dividends for 35 years with 4% annual increments will still have 1.95M at 60.

Hence we all don't believe the EPF low millionaires stat.

As some of you have confirmed seeing pay from 20-50k per month and they are many earn more than that.

i think a lot of people drop out from being a full time employee along the way hence the account unable to reach millionaire status.

epf stats is what it is lah... low millionaire count most likely follow the bros here keep withdrawing to the max for outside investment...

especially bankers they know money... why keep in epf when can buy employee shares at discount.. lol...

Generally so, but I assume they will also withdraw EPF for housing or education, so it knocks the dividend compounding effects a bit. Plus not all will continue to work until retirement.

Secondly, "...following the recent COVID-19 pandemic, there were over 7.4 million EPF members who withdrew a total of RM101.1 billion from the fund through COVID-19-related schemes such as i-Lestari, i-Sinar and i-Citra.", this also does not help as people tend to withdraw it.

What EPF should do is provide the stat in certain granularity that show breakdown of how the depositor's grow from year to year which show how one progressing over the years rather than just slice the data in some way to support the narratives of doom and gloom that always ended up ethnically segregated and have vs have not group...