If you are capable of building your EPF up to 5-6 mil, you probably don't care too much about ASB profits anymore

That's only the EPF component. What have you done with the rest of your earnings? Spent it all? That's your problem then.

Get a Bumi wife, or husband...

So I did some googling. According to Google, the UEM/Renong affair was related to the policies in place at the time, or more particularly the PM of that time. There have been 2 more PMs and whole raft of policy changes since then. Things have moved on.

Neither does all the other AS* funds make any mention of capital guaranteed/protected in the master prospectus.

No, it should not be benchmarked against any balanced index. Because it is fixed price at RM1 + plus some distribution payout (which can be seen as interest).

In the worse case where there is no interest paid out that year, you still get your RM1 back on redemption. You can't say the same for a balanced fund.

If you look the historical payouts of the AS* funds, they are a "smoothed-curve" type of distribution. When the sharemarkets were up significantly in the recent few years eg 2006/2007 giving returns of 20-40% for equities-based funds, the AS* were still giving out something like 6-8% pa.

Where's the difference gone? Well, they must have kept the profits from the good years so they can continue to give payouts during the bad/negative years.

As long as the funds can withstand the bad years by 1) Being big enough, which they are, and 2) Reputable enough so they don't get panic withdrawals, and which they also are.