Let me first start by admitting that I am almost clueless about Unit Trusts. However a few years back I decided to support a friend who is a Public Mutual agent, and ever since funds have been withdrawn from my EPF to go into unit trusts that he manages. But it seems like his unit trusts have been underperforming (versus EPF's return) for the past few years since we started.

Now he's asking to withdraw even more from my EPF. Should I stop all of this and just keep the funds in EPF? Or let him continue with the unit trusts?

If you want to buy unit trust, now is the good time. Stock market is down.

Most of the time: EPF is better, very low risk, guaranteed by government. No charges to sell back.

It’s a good way for Unit Trusts agents to siphon your EPF and immediate profit for agents.

Unit trust return also not that good anyway minus fees year fees agent fees. Better leave it in EPF.

it is a no brainer. Withdrawing from EPF to unit trusts is not a good option. Why?
1. Buying into the unit trust, you have to pay 3% Management fee. Imagine, the trust have not even started making money for you, you are already at a -3% position.
2. There is no guarantee that you will make money. In fact, some funds are losing value. At least EPF is guaranteed to give you at least the prevalent FD rate.

Some may argue, the market is cyclical, when times are good, it will the losses will be recouped if we look at 5y -10y horizon. Right, the same can be said about EPF, risk free.

There were fear about EPF being a piggy bank of the government before due to mismanagement of government finances which is true to a certain extent. However, i want to believe that EPF is one of the well managed government entity that we have in Malaysia just like LHDN/Khazanah/PNB/BNM. The people running it day to day are professionals and are the creme de la creme of the society. It is the politicians sitting in the Boardroom that are creating all the problems.

They say to sell Unit Trusts during MCO.
I didn't and I lost about RM10k.

Don't TRUST them. Only a handful beats EPF returns.

Whats the unit trust you bought?
I believe most fund dropped due to covid19, excluding precious metal

To be honest I don't really know. Just that when I met him about 2-3 months ago, I know that only some are positive, but still nowhere near to cover the losses.
Thank you guys for giving your opinions. So far I'm seeing that it's best to just keep the funds in EPF.

it depends if u know how to choose a quality funds, if u bet on good quality funds yeah, your annual return could be more than EPF return

but how many people out there know how to screen out quality funds to invest?

majority are just persuaded by sale oriented agents (which most likely dunno or not well versed on quality funds as well) to take out EPF monie and invest in funds.

these sale hold no responsibility in your investment decision yet earn on your investment's sale charge tho

majority of time if u let your friend manage your UT, sure koyak one

i got my friend to manage my UT also, money burn, i ask to sold the remaining and then i took back whatever i have and manage my own UT buys

They all do part time, they only start to care when u stop giving them money. My friend also asked me to draw out my EPF, which i didnt cause no way can beat EPF return.

so like most of the respondents here, i'm voting to keep the money in EPF.

it's just so hard to find a unit trust fund that could give you more than 5 - 6% p.a. returns. i'd say picking an EPF-beating fund is almost like gambling.

be good with your friend, be better with your money

I made the mistake not once but twice. First time into CIMB Mutual Fund. Lost 5-7%. Took out the fund and put back in EPF. Then, 2nd time with Kenaga. Lost 8-9%. (This is including commission but not including the potential profit I would have gain from EPF).

based on feedback here...epf still the safest option to keep more money in it

Stay away from local unit trusts like a plague. You are not going to make money out of it. The agents and the FI will get paid no matter what the economic climate will be. At least EPF guarantees minimum 2% profit if im not mistaken.

your friend didn't tell you that you can diy invest your epf money with 0 - 0.5% sales charge only ?

https://www.kwsp.gov.my/-/kwsp-salurkan-rm1...ortfolio-luaran

those agents gonna hate me here

Divest all my UT back to EPF years back. No regrets.

My best fiend is a unit trust agent, but he knows that I really dislike unit trust agents,with a passion haha. I'm not generalizing but I can say that 99% of unit trust agents don't care about your savings or how much money you make. They only care about their commission. For me personally, I don't touch my EPF money.

Epf is one of the safest investment. Not many can earn more than epf. Even if there is, its higher risk anyway.

Having said that, i expect this year epf divvy not that good. Hence i dropped some into unit trust from epf for the first time. A bit late to the market. But im paper earning close to 10% in a month time. Banking on the recovery of the market.

Now a bit regret didn't drop more.

This post has been edited by cempedaklife: May 15 2020, 08:01 PM

my own preference is not to invest using EPF since EPF itself is not that bad either. also by using EPF to invest into UT through UT agent, the total fee charged will be 3%. so yea the UT you choose at least must perform at least more than 7% to grow more in the long run.

No good idea to put money out of EPF and put in unit trust.

But certainly it is a good idea to invest in the stock market.

Usually people first contribute the maximum to EPF (think it is 60000) and then put the rest in FD and stock market.

Why take EPF money to dabble? It's a safety net.

There is always PRS, suppose to be EPF back-up plan. From my experience, if not for the savings on income tax, I would stay far away from PRS.

i do agree with you. there are so many good funds to choose from asides those from PRS.

You are clueless, and his unit trusts have been underperforming.

Perfect reasons to keep in EPF.

(and give him a kick in the butt, but that's optional).

Been invested in public unit trust for 5 years with monthly top up, even bought the newly launched fund with extra 1% unit. But sadly since day 1 losing money. The launch price is RM0.25 and continue dropping till RM0.1x.after 5 years. In the end I gave up and withdraw with net loss few k not counting the interest if put into bank. Most money paid as mgmt fee only

Check out EPF making unrealised loss of 1.4bil in 2018, also negative reserve of 9bil in 2018. Donno why EPF yet to publish their 2019 report, I bet the loss and reverse might be even greater.



https://www.kwsp.gov.my/documents/20126/974...t=1564377639847

EPF declares stable dividends every year. When they perform well, they will keep the remaining profits so that future years can still declare. This time around market has only performed well in 1 out of the past 5 years, until the reserve also become negative. Why EPF can declare 5% dividend in 2019 while Tabung Haji cannot? Not to worry as EPF has guaranteed dividend 2.5%, but donno where they will get the money.

EPF recently (commenced this month) lowered fee to transfer to Unit Trust via i invest at 0% fee (before was 0.5%) and through agent to 1.5% (before was 3%). Not sure why EPF giving such an incentive right now?

Making profit or loss depend on when you transferred (if you had transferred 15 years ago, UT might have outperformed EPF. if 5 years ago, most likely it is loss)

There are few cases where transfer from EPF to unit trust might work:
-If you can predict future market performance (if you think market will gain higher than epf 5% can also able to cover fee of 0%-1.5%)
-To reallocate between equity and bond (EPF is roughly 50% equity 50% bond, switching to unit trust can let you allocate higher portion to either which one you want more)
-To reallocate diversify to specific country market

This post has been edited by cxjiek: May 15 2020, 10:24 PM

that was ending Dec 2018....1 year later they can still gives 5.45% dividend rate for year 2019...

No not worth it, the benefits you gain from EPF are way more than what you risk in mutual funds. I am not against investing in unit trust, in fact I made quite a handsome returns from them. However, EPF is your retirement fund hence, preserving and protecting your funds is the priority. It is your golden nest eggs

most people get to know of unit trust through Public Mutual. PM doesn't have a lot of good funds to choose from. you can open an account and waive agent commission through eUnitTrust or FSM. im from Phillip eUnitTrust btw. if you still wanna have a portion of your portfolio in UT and will like choose from more than 30 fund houses, you can deposit investment fund yourself. eUnitTrust/FSM is suitable for you then.

yes agree with you. some agents advise clients to invest from EPF is because clients will mostly agree since they do not need to fork out money from their pocket. really sad to see this, i have a client whom has less than 10 years to retire, invest into a bad performing china equity fund from PM... regretted his decision.

Now I'm no accountant. But I believe those numbers you are seeing are the effects of EPF switching to MFRS9 accounting standard in 2018. You can see that the main reason why the reserves and the total comprehensive income became negative is due to a revaluation of their equity assets from using AFS to FVOCI. MFRS9 includes some kind of impairment provision into the revaluation if I'm not mistaken, hence dragging down the revaluation.

If you look at their statement of P&L, it is still healthy. Retained Profits increased from RM 3.8 bil to RM 5.2 bil. Meaning their investment activities are still sound.



As to why so long 2019 not out, I don't know. But EPF is not alone. Pretty much all the government bodies have yet to release their 2019 annual report.

This post has been edited by Eurobeater: May 20 2020, 01:33 PM

Don't withdraw EPF funds to buy UTs.
Keep it in EPF.

Yes, but the real purpose of PRS is not make sure you contribute diligently for a period of time, force investing.

Don't do it if you don't know what you are doing.

My personal opinion is that taking EPF (which almost guarantee you minimum 5-6% return) and putting it into Unit Trust is totally not a best move.

Like earlier someone mentioned, a lot of those friends as agent will tell you take your EPF out and invest into those Equity funds, it can generate 18% - 40% return from what you see in the past. Then you don't need to take out your own money (Cash) so you wont feel you are losing out. In fact, when you withdraw EPF and invest into UT, last time usually invest using EPF will have 3% sales charge for those growth fund, which means before your investment start to make money for you, you got penalised to pay commission to the company and your friend by paying 3%. To earn back this 3% is not like this year up 3% then you gain back, you need it to up at least 3.5% just to breakeven. Dont forget about your EPF return that give u 5-6% returns.

I am not saying Unit Trust is not a good investment tools, but just now using your EPF. Invest your cash or savings and understand the type of Uint Trust. A lot of agents out there introduce you Unit Trust which is growth fund (high risk) and comes with high sales charge and management fee. It is suitable to you? Not necessary, but is suitable to your friend because he can earn commission. I am not blaming the agents, they are finding a living too, but you must understand your own risk appetite and investment horizon (short term, long term) and the liquidity of your cash.

Hope it helps explain your concern.

It depends, if u are familiar with investimg through the stock market or unit trust, i believe you are also familiar with the risk.

I actually started to invest in unit trust via epf i-invest around 2 month ago. I also invest in the stock market and unit trust directly and aware of the risk. I also control my exposure by allowing only a certain percentage in the unit trust. I also have managed to earn roughly 3x of the 2019 dividend ( percentage wise for the amount invested) for this short period.

Please do not follow the advise of unit trust agent, learn about investing yourself and get familiar with all the charges involved. By the way all sales charge for EPF MIS through i-invest is 0%. The one who tell you otherwise is just not updated and the previous sales charge coupled with listening to their agent without any understanding of investment caused a lot of people to get burned.

This post has been edited by backspace66: May 20 2020, 05:13 PM

The only person making money here is your ‘friend’

It is about averaging monthly..If u not consistent..better dont..

I initially invested some elf money into mutual fund through investment agent. This year, I asked whether got any difference if I invest directly through I-invest, he said cannot, EPF withdrawal can only be done through thumb print using agent's help... is he BS me? do I need to do thumb print withdrawal with I-invest website?

iInvest needs to have existing account from supporting platforms: FSM, eUT, PM, Principal, etc
Otherwise, you have to it the manual way.

Example 1: If you select a fund from Principal


Example 2: If you select a fund from Kenanga


Best way is to have/open an account with FSM (iFast) or eUT (Philip Mutual)

This post has been edited by GrumpyNooby: Dec 2 2020, 05:29 PM

Ive always wanted to withdraw my epf and putting it into UT

But after reading this thread, am glad i didnt

Why glad that you didn't?

That is pure BS, he just want to earn partly from the sales charge. If you buy yourself from epf-mis portal, you can get 0 % sales charge and he will not earn anything from you.

Just as a reminder, 0% sales charge is temporary until next year april IIRC. As for FSM , the sales charge for epf-mis is 0% even after the next april 2021 but other fund house such as public mutual will start to charge 0.5% afterwards.

Register for FSM and public mutual online and proceed to invest through epf-mis.

This post has been edited by backspace66: Dec 2 2020, 06:06 PM

You don’t need thumb print withdrawal

Go get your online epf log in and try it yourself
Many good and helpful people here that can help you if you encounter any issues

Seems public mutual fee is not worth it

Better learn and update man. All the complain is before the existence of epf-mis portal(august last year) which enable you to invest yourself with zero or near zero sales charge (public mutual 0.5% after next april 2021)

Majority of unit trust in Malaysia are rubbish. I will say 90% of them.
Only some are good ones. The good ones easily 10-20% returns every year. Living proof.

Public mutual was never any good. Never buy unit trust based on brands.

Since it’s still 0% sales charge, you should grab this opportunity

And yes, like all the sifus say there’s so many other better funds available in epf-mis

Base on history, EPF returns are doing much better
Am not going to take out money from EPf to put into UT

think 20 times before parking money in UT. I havent had good experience, to me let it compund in EPF is better.

Or if you can take out, buy gold.

Although a PB Bank shareholder, I used to be a PB Mutual hater due to the weak return over the years, BUT they surprised me this year



This post has been edited by cklimm: Dec 2 2020, 08:46 PM

agree. our local fund managers underperform as compared to overseas one. Not to mention the various sales charge and fees.

That's only true if
1) you pick lousy funds which is majority of what's being sold. So chances of picking the lousy fund is very high considering majority of it is lousy
2) you blindly buy without what fund to buy (ie listen to agents)

That's why learning how to analyze unit trust is very important.

Overseas also the same. Only a handful of funds are good to buy overseas.

This post has been edited by Ramjade: Dec 2 2020, 09:19 PM

Ramjade, may i know why you buy from eunitrust sg instead of fsm sg? Also, do you mind sharing which fund u bought in Singapore? TQ

I got some surprise this year as well. One of my 3 years old fund yield 30% return (10% p.a. on average), sold it already. Another fund I bought early this year is seeing 27% return already, despite less than a year. Previous years all my funds are either at loss or below 5% return.

FSM SG have quarterly platform fees while eUT SG does not have quarterly fees.
Both zero service charge. So why should I pay FSM SG for quarterly platform fees when eUT SG is not charging me? What benefits I will get from FSM SG to warrant that extra charge? Nothing.
Both have the same fund.

Schoders asia growth
Blackrock World Tech funds
- You can pick any tech funds, is just I like this one

I only have this 2 and they are good. Giving me almost 30% returns already.

Any EPF-MIS funds exposed to US market?

Try check this out?
It is at abt 39.5%
Principal global titan fund
https://www.fsmone.com.my/funds/tools/facts...c=global-search

i think cannot go wrong with good funds. i using hit and run method. anytime my epf fund i invest using FSM hit 10% i will take out. then put back in again. cos sometimes fund like china one very volatile, anytime can hit 10% in 1 month. if i can hit 10%, i already get so much better return compare to EPF.

may i know which fund did you invest in?

if you are in KGF and been investing consistently, you should be positive right now instead.

I think this keep in EPF vs use EPF money to invest in UT, depends on the risk appetite of the individual. For example, 59 vs 24 year old, a person with millionaire parents, person with 6 dependents vs bachelor with no family, etc.

Also important is that the person has some financial knowledge, personal interest and time to analyse UT.

This post has been edited by ChessRook: Mar 31 2021, 02:46 PM

UT is not like share market, u put in today, then tomorrow cash out. Is a long term saving for compounding purpose ma.

If you wanna see a big untung, then go forex, or those money game.

Just my 2cent.

Recently I got look into some equity fund that has average around 8-10% return. Not bad what?

eUT SG --> this one ? https://unittrust.poems.com.sg/
any difference from this --> https://www.poems.com.sg/

Same.

Came across this thread, then it reminds me of what I read on EPF regarding 0% UT for certain fund house.

Are alot of you guys venturing into this still since it's almost ending (April deadline)? I heard good returns on it, but for myself, I try not to touch my EPF, just because.

Can't recall the fund. Yes, it might turn profit now. But no regrets for me since after I moved the fund to EPF, still getting good returns without headache.

I put some into Public Mutual (global select fund n singapore equities) as well as principal (one of the China-exposure funds).

Not looking or expecting super big profits, but just want diversify. So far Public Mutual funds are up 15% unrealised profit, Principal is -3%

This post has been edited by DragonReine: Apr 1 2021, 12:27 AM

timing to invest in UT is also kinda important, investing in all time high might set you back a little.

But if you are in KGF, their annualised return has always been good and even up a lot (2 folds easily) since its inception.

is this the same company from eunittrust malaysia, just that poem is sg version ?
what do they earn if there is not fees at all ? earning from target incentive?

SG company is the parent company. Like FSM. FSM MY and FSM SG are different.
They earned by trailing fees. The more money they hold, the more money they get from funds. Eg a expense ratio is 1.5%. Out of the 1.5%, maybe 0.3% go to companies like FSM and POEMS. No one knows what is the trailing fees those companies earned.

ah i see, thanks for sharing.
which platform would you recommend for sg stocks? saxo or poem ?

FSM/Tiger/Interactive Broker. Avoid Saxo or POEM.

didnt know ibkr is good for holding sg stocks, reits, will explore since i have tsg account.
fsm here referring to fsm sg right ?

so poem is only good if you are into sg unit trust for their 0% fees ?

Come on. IBKR have the cheapest commision.
Yes FSM SG.

Yes POEMS SG is only good for UT

IBKR 0.12% or min SGD 3.75 is really awesome
FSM 0.08% or min SGD 10 is good if amount is >12,500 , correct ?

Is it because SAXO are the fees? Or something else?

tiger cheaper actually with 0.08% no min

is there any referral promotion going on for fsm sg currently ?

Thanks for your response. Diversify is important, this is my goal too. Since it's 0%, it seems reasonable to do so. But lately market a bit wee wee le, lol...

Haha, personally I think if your concern is the volatility but you want to take advantage of equity based UTs' potential returns, a conservative way to do it would be to choose UTs where the prospectus indicates exposure to a wide range of developed countries. Usually (but not always) these kinds of funds will have quite steady growth, not very exciting but you won't lose sweat either. My investments in Public Global Select Fund, for example, has only stayed in green zone since I invested XD

Good luck!

Yes. If you are doing SGD12500 better got with pure IB. Cheaper.
For me, there's no reason to open FSM.

Yup. Saxo like FSM only good for SG stocks. Nothing else. Do not fall for their marketing. Saxo have very good marketing.
Saxo have platform fees, lousy exchange rate vs IBKR.

If you trust a China company eventhough they have license. For me I only use them for real time data.


Only this
https://secure.fundsupermart.com/fsm/advice...vices/faq/8937/

Anybody into 0% promo trade for US stocks for POEMS just for this month only?

Don't get bluff by 0% promo. There's platform fees. You want real 0%, use webull where everyday is zero.

What is their actual platform fees on POEMS? A bit confused on their fees structure

https://globalmarkets.poems.com.sg/faq/fees...ges-settlement/

Settlement fees it looks like it

Super confusing especially Asian brokerages

Wow, so many platform wants to be like EPF. Look at characteristic

EPF
- Every month 21% deducted from your salary to EPF for investment.
- EPF build porfolio using SAA (strategic asset allocation) just a fancy name means, 50% fixed income, 40% equity (local/foreign), 6% property, 4% money market
- 0 fees

Unit trust, mutual, stashaway, whatever
- Every month you decide pump in how many
- depend on type above u choose, and porfolio they build, be it by robo by fund manager, choose their own SAA style
- annual fees (1-2%), transaction fees ( 0.x - 1.x%) no free lunch, initial buying fees, some could cut into 5% first etc...

The way they make money is the the more u transact...the more fees. So, your investment, please take into account such thing, every month u depost RM1000 to whatever type, could be 1% charges or 10 ringgit whatever depend %, so your RM1000 is actuall 990 only, plus yearly come, fund manager wants to take a cut.

At the e nd of the day, it is the returns that matters to each individuals at the investment platform or products that suits the risk appetite n returns expectations of that individuals...
Fees are just secondary....
It will have to be the consistency of "net" returns that matters most in their mind initally.

After some times, if the returns are consistent, then they will think abt the fees variance..... To try to get more for the same amount of risk taken

This post has been edited by yklooi: Apr 2 2021, 08:53 AM

Definitely a lot of irresponsible agents out there. I have seen some actually got their clients to park EPF money into Public Mutual bond funds with 4% 10 year annualized returns, which is lower than EPF 6% 10y.

The excuse was so that they can reoptimize the portfolio when equity markets are underperforming. Completely ridiculous - why not reoptimize into the EPF fund itself then?

This is in addition to parking in equity fund with only 7% 10y annualized performance. Why risk your EPF money for extra 1% outperformance?

EPF already put 50% in fixed income and 3% in money market iirc. Agents really got huge conflicts of interest.

Better EPF because:-

1. less risk

2. compunded dividen every year

3. Every month deduct salary 11% and Employer contribute 13% and go into your EPF.

4. 50 years old age can take out 1/3 and at 55 years old can take out all. However below 50 years old also can take out if more than a million in your EPF account. You can take out the balance at anytime. Minimum cannot take out is RM1 million.

You don't always have to flex to prove a point you know. Just saying.

Just gonna leave this here.

I cincai throw into one UT during the 0% sales charge sometime Oct last year, gonna sell back and put into EPF balik.

good that you got positive results in your investment.

if those that had previously entered and cabut during these indicated periods, they would have cursed about this fund at that time of their exit....their reasons are valid too....


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as per 2018 article....
A net worth of $93,170 U.S. (abt RM400k) is enough to make you richer than 90 percent of people around the world, Credit Suisse reports.
The institute defines net worth, or “wealth,” as “the value of financial assets plus real assets (principally housing) owned by households, minus their debts.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/07/how-much-mo...-worldwide.html

in 2019 report, 3.7% Malaysians was placed in the US$100,000 to US$1 million wealth band.
https://themalaysianreserve.com/2019/10/22/...wealth-bracket/