Malaysia’s 526.8 billion ringgit ($171.2 billion) Employees Provident Fund, Kuala Lumpur, has outsourced 57.67 billion ringgit to external fund managers, or roughly 11% of the mandatory national retirement scheme’s investment assets, according to an announcement Thursday on the EPF’s website.
An EPF spokesman couldn’t immediately be reached for comparable year-earlier figures.
The EPF announcement cited the provident fund’s allocations to external managers as “part of its diversification strategy and to further develop the fund management industry in Malaysia.”
EPF Chairman Tan Sri Samsudin Osman, speaking Wednesday at an EPF annual awards ceremony to recognize the fund’s top-performing external managers, noted Malaysia’s fund management industry “has grown in size and capability, from only a handful of local managers to an impressive list that includes foreign players,” according to the fund’s announcement.
In the announcement, the EPF chairman said the EPF will closely monitor its external managers to ensure they’re delivering value for plan participants, adding the EPF will “reward the performers while those who underperformed will be phased out.”
Asked what criteria the EPF employs to fire an underperforming manager, EPF spokesman Nik Affendi Jaafar, in an e-mail, declined to elaborate.
