“Full Portability” Sets Sail on 21 December — But the Ticket Is Only for Employees Hired After 1 May 2025. How Long Must Everyone Else Wait?

Last Friday (16 October), the government gazetted the Commencement Notice appointing 21 December 2026 as the day the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes (General) (Amendment) Regulation 2025 comes into operation. Phase One “Full Portability” finally has a launch date. The Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, Christopher Hui, called it the fulfilment of the 2026 Policy Address pledge to implement Phase One within 2026.

Hold the applause. The ticket for this ship is issued only to employees hired on or after 1 May 2025. For the remaining millions of scheme members, the government’s line is: “Phase Two Full Portability, which will benefit the remaining employees — we are preparing the legislative proposal and will introduce an amendment bill into the Legislative Council by mid-2027.” Introduce a bill is not pass a bill; a mid-2027 introduction leaves the commencement date anybody’s guess.

“Full Portability” sounds sweeping, but arithmetically it is a ship sailing in two departures — and most people are booked on the second one, whose departure time is still unwritten.

Three generations of transfer rights: which one are you holding?

Under the old regime, an employee could move only their own 5% each year; the employer’s 5% stayed locked in the employer’s chosen scheme. After Phase One, new hires can move both halves. The catch: a worker hired on 30 April 2025 and one hired on 1 May 2025 end up with rights a full legislative cycle apart. That is not a design flaw — it is a deliberate two-phase rollout, because Phase Two requires amending the Employment Ordinance itself.

Why Phase Two is slow: special accounts and the offsetting nexus

The legislative difficulty is that employer contributions must be carved out of the contribution account into a brand-new “employer mandatory contributions special account”, from which members transfer to their chosen scheme. Why the detour? The severance / long-service-payment offsetting arrangement. Since the abolition of offsetting took effect on 1 May 2025, employer contributions can no longer be used to offset severance — but employer contributions made before 1 May 2025 in existing members’ accounts retain their offsetting function. The two pools of money — offsettable and non-offsettable — must be separated before members can freely move them without disturbing employers’ statutory offsetting rights. That is why Phase Two needs an Employment Ordinance amendment, not just subsidiary legislation.

The consultation paper (consultation closed April 2025) proposed the core model: one full transfer per year to a personal account in the scheme of choice, free of charge. But it has already taken over a year to go from consultation paper to a promised bill; from bill introduction to passage and gazetting, another 18 months would be optimistic. In other words, the remaining employees’ employer contributions are unlikely to move freely before 2028 — and today is October 2026.

One procedural footnote: the Commencement Notice taking effect on 21 December is only submitted to LegCo this Wednesday (21 October) under negative vetting. If LegCo objects during scrutiny, the date could still shift — though with the Amendment Regulation itself passed back on 26 September 2025, that risk is small.

The compounding cost of the legislative waiting room: waiting is not free

Waiting for legislation is not free. Every year employer contributions sit trapped in an expensive scheme, members pay a “waiting tax”.

Illustrative math: monthly salary HK$30,000, employer contributes HK$1,500 a month, 7% gross return, a 0.59 percentage-point fee gap (market-average FER 1.36% versus DIS actual average around 0.77%):

• 10 years: gap of about HK$7,837
• 20 years: gap of about HK$48,013
• 30 years: gap of about HK$167,718 — roughly half the average balance of HK$338,950, or 21 months of HK$8,000-a-month living expenses

Or from the existing-balance angle: suppose HK$250,000 of your employer-contribution accrued benefits is locked in. Every extra year of waiting costs 0.59% × HK$250,000 ≈ HK$1,475, quietly paid out. Two years of waiting, nearly HK$3,000. The longer the wait, the bigger the trapped balance grows, and the more expensive the waiting tax becomes. Time is on the fee collector’s side.

The way out: two checklists for two groups of readers

If you were hired on or after 1 May 2025 (you hold a ticket):

1. First move after 21 December: use the eMPF platform to transfer the full accrued benefits of your current employer’s contributions, in one go, to a personal account in a low-fee scheme of your choice. Keep moving your own 5% annually via ECA (quota resets 1 January).
2. Forward-pricing defence: transfers price on a T+1/T+2 forward basis, with a one-to-two-week out-of-market window. Avoid executing around rate-decision weeks — the next FOMC window is 8–9 December, right at the start of implementation, so think through lump versus staged moves.
3. Choose on fees: market average 1.36% versus DIS actual average around 0.77%. Picking the wrong scheme is a voluntary annual donation of 0.59 percentage points.

If you are everyone else (waiting for the second ship):

1. Use ECA as normal: once a year, move your employee contributions to a low-fee scheme. The quota resets every 1 January — unused, it lapses. This is your only legal escape hatch today; do not waste it.
2. The TVC back door: tax-deductible voluntary contribution balances can be transferred in full to another scheme’s TVC account at any time, without going through the employer — a low-fee migration path that bypasses ECA limits, available today.
3. Track the legislation: the Phase Two bill lands in LegCo by mid-2027 — that is the members’ action window. Hui says Full Portability will “create room for fee reductions”. Fee cuts never happen by themselves; members vote with transfers, and only then do trustees move.

“Full Portability” points in the right direction, but 21 December is only the starting line — and a starting line for the few. What most people are waiting for is not a date but a bill that has not been written. While waiting, play the cards in hand: ECA once a year, TVC transfers any time. Until the legislation arrives, those two cards are your full portability.