Do you need to enroll in MPF?

If you are 18 years old but under 65 and are fully or partly employed, your employer has to enroll you in a MPF scheme within the first 60 days of employment. The 60 days refer to calendar days and not working days. Probationary period has no bearings on the counting of the days. If the employment is terminated before the 60^th day, the employer does not need to enroll the employee in the MPF. Moreover, the 60-day employment rule does not apply to casual employees in the construction and catering businesses.

Under what circumstances do you have to choose your own MPF scheme?

1. When your employer offers two or more schemes
2. If you are self-employed
3. If you want to make voluntary contributions
4. when you transfer the accrued benefits from an old MPF scheme to another trustee upon leaving your old job
5. when you opt to transfer the accrued benefits derived from your employee mandatory contributions to a new scheme. Under the Employee Choice Arrangement (ECA), employees are given the right of such a transfer once a year. They can also choose to retain the accrued benefits in the original scheme selected by their employers.

To enroll the employees in the MPF, the employer has to provide them with an enrollment form for the MPF scheme he or she participates in. The employees will indicate in the form the types of funds that they wish to contribute to, sign the form and return it to the trustee through the employer. The trustee will then set up an account for the employees.

If an employee does not return a completed enrollment form to the employer, the employer will still send the incomplete enrolment to the trustee.  The contributions from the employee will then be invested according to the Default Investment Strategy (DIS) of the scheme.