Four tips for transferring your MPF personal account

This article is a rewrite of a report from May 2012.

As the MPFA and trustees step up promotion, more members want to tidy up their MPF personal accounts (also called preserved accounts). Before transferring a personal account, four things deserve a close look: fees and returns, lock-in periods on offers, the fee breakdown, and minimum thresholds.

How do you transfer an MPF personal account?

Transferring an MPF personal account means moving accrued benefits from an old account to another trustee’s scheme. There are four things to check: weigh fees and returns together, see whether the offer is tied to a lock-in period, examine each fee line, and watch the minimum thresholds. Each is explained below.

Four transfer tips, step by step

1. Fees and returns both matter: some trustees have cut fees or offer incentives to members transferring personal accounts. Read the fine print — fund performance and service quality matter as much as the price cut.
2. Offers may carry a lock-in: fee cuts or bonus-unit rebates can be tied to a lock-in period, requiring the personal account to be held for a specified term before the benefit vests.
3. Read every fee line: MPF fees span trustee fees, management fees, legal and audit costs, transaction fees, underlying-fund charges, annual fees and bid-offer spreads. The fund expense ratio — which captures management fees, special levies and charges on underlying funds — allows like-for-like comparison.
4. Thresholds apply: some discount programmes are open to new customers only and set minimum transfer amounts, for example HK$10,000 or more.

What tools compare MPF fees?

Members can use the MPFA’s fee comparative platform (http://cplatform.mpfa.org.hk) to compare fund expense ratios across peer funds at a glance. For the full fee picture, check the fee tables in the scheme’s offering documents on the trustee’s website — and call the trustee’s hotline with any questions.