MPFA Non-Executive Director Urges Fund Database — Comparing MPF Shouldn’t Be Guesswork

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

Ahead of MPF semi-portability on 1 November 2012, an MPFA non-executive director who is also a unionist legislator urged the authority to build a fund database so members could compare MPF with real data instead of guessing. Fellow non-executive directors Andrew Leung and another appointee also pressed for switching transparency.

Why a database?

No data, no comparison. The legislator-director argued semi-portability let employees move their own contributions once a year, but no one-stop fund data existed — fees, returns and risk ratings scattered everywhere, leaving members nothing to compare. He urged the MPFA to lead on an official database.

What worried officials about rankings?

Fear of league-table chasing. The MPFA hesitated over publishing performance tables, worried members would chase short-term winners and assume past returns predicted future ones — encouraging short-term trading. But the directors countered that hiding data made information asymmetry worse.

Database versus comparison platform?

One is raw material, the other the finished tool. A database supplies raw inputs — fees, returns, asset values; the fee-comparison platform is the processed tool. The directors wanted both: without a database, even the best comparison platform has nothing to cook with.

What is the lesson from 2012?

Transparency is the ticket to portability. The directors’ 2012 plea named semi-portability’s Achilles’ heel: choice without visibility. When comparing MPF means guessing, switching is gambling. The more transparent the data, the smarter members choose.