Does an MPF performance report equal your actual return?

Under the European debt crisis, some MPF funds posted losses and the media was full of MPF fund performance stories. But 李秉熙, AXA’s chief director of retirement and intermediary sales development, warned in his column: MPF is long-term investing, and members should not change long-term strategy on short-term swings — because published performance reports do not equal your personal investment result.

Why doesn’t an MPF performance report equal your personal return?

An MPF performance report does not equal your personal return because reports typically compare a fund’s unit price at launch with its price on the report date — a single-date return — while members invest by dollar-cost averaging, buying units each month at that day’s price, with different start dates and purchase prices. Reports are also constrained: they use the latest fund prices available at the time, though funds publish data on different schedules; some funds offer multiple unit classes with different fees that reports cannot compare. The simplest personal-return calculation is current accrued benefits minus total contributions — the difference is your actual performance.

What to watch when reading MPF performance reports

李秉熙 noted most people learn about research reports from media coverage, but space constraints mean the media can only excerpt highlights, never the full picture — members should not decide on press coverage alone, but read the whole report before analysing. Reports are typically structured as:

How to calculate your true MPF return

Rather than chasing reported rankings, do your own sum: current accrued benefits minus total contributions — the difference is your actual investment result. To compare funds’ long-term performance on full data, use MPF fund comparison, then judge against your own participation period and risk tolerance.