How about refinance the house? use the extra cash from the refinancing to clear the personal loan, as the rate is 11%. How many years your friend has been paying the hse loan so far? and what is the market value of the house?

While hse loan is at 4.4% (is much more lower than the personal loan)...
btw, how old is your friend? if he still young, can consider refinance.

the number of years you can borrow is up to 35 years or if your friend reach 70 yr old, whichever reach first. (correct me if i'm wrong).

personally, i will not go for the epf withdrawal as it still gives about 6% (assuming that your friend still working, and contributing to epf... the total will gradually grow).
i think in this case, refinance the house is a better option.

while, can use the epf for investment, that will be your retirement (Unless your friend has a better achievement in terms of ROI that is more than the epf 6% annually, else you can consider that.

While your friend get to clear the personal loan, he also can use the epf to invest. however, please be caution, that investment comes with risk. so it depends on your friend risk appetite, and the discipline for it.
if you go for high risk investment via epf, you may get high return, but you also may risk high losses. basically just do your due diligence.

but TS mentioned his friend personal loan has a 11% interest rate. If he do a balance transfer /cash on call via credit card, it will be about 4-9% and also got processing/admin fee if not mistaken.

9% and 11% not much difference.

i agreed that 15k is not a big limit. However, depends also on his friend's salary/income. If his friend able to save 2k to 3k per mth, he just need about 5-7.5 mths to clear.

If he can borrow from his relatives/friends/parents, by offering 3-5% for them, and at the same time nego to pay back in installment... this way not just can help his friend reduce/clear in few mths time, but also able to keep his epf intact. This is because his friend do not know about investment, and finds it complicated. Therefore, in this case, is better to keep the money in epf.

15k to some ppl is no big deal, but to some ppl it maybe a big deal... so it depends on various factors that TS's friend only knows.

Almost every sentence you wrote raises a red flag.

If you thiink 11% is high, I would imagine him paying from 12% to 18% with a credit card.

And how to get money out of EPF... except maybe using fradulent documents... if there was any easy loophole, it would have been abused by many people ages ago, and already closed. So let's not waste time on non-solutions...

It might be high time to face reality that he could be living beyond his salary and financial status... for example, if can't afford to have medical care in a private facilty, then the option is public hospital.

With the high DSR, talking of making some interest savings by changing from one loan to another can be extraneous. Banks would assess the credit risk of the individual and charges the interest accordingly. So we can't simply say that if we were offered an interest rate of x% from Bank A, your friend could save some money by having a lower interest loan by switching to Bank A.

Anyway, the best time to think about making any interest savings was before and during the application of the loan. After making the decision to take any loan, it is already clear how much we have pay in installments every month, and more important, whether we can cover the installments and other bills and expenses from our salary.

What would throw a spanner into the monthly budget is extraodinary or unexpected expenses in some months, thereby missing some payments and incurring late payment penalties and maybe, due to these late payments, the bank increases the interest rate.

If this is what your friend is facing, not able to make ends meet in some months, then maybe the better option is to approach AKPK for assistance... https://www.akpk.org.my/

(See also the AKPK thread in this forum for further info and queries...)

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"... the question is always, will bank lock the money from EPF, and do not treat that as semi-flexi fund."
The EPF website has further info on monthly withdrawals to supplement the monthly housing installments... how to apply, etc... the question of whether the bank lock the money is irrelevant; you pay a lesser amount on the installment, and EPF helps pay the remaining portion.

By the way the question was phrased, any newbie to flexi-loan could mistakenly assumed that whatever amount of money we put into the flexi or semi-flexi could be withdrawn. It is actually the extra money that is above the required monthly installment that can be withdrawn.

The main problem is, I think, that there is confusion on how the bank will treats the extra money - a) as advance payment into future installments, or b) a standby sum to contra outstanding balance and interest charged which can be withdrawn.

As said, the EPF monthly withdrawals are to supplement the monthly installments...