Profile of Employees Provident Fund (EPF) Contributors and Their Views towards the EPF Scheme

Abstract

Aim: The objectives of this explanatory study are to investigate the profile of EPF contributors; existing and past employees demographically and analyze their established views towards the Malaysia’s EPF scheme covering the social aspects. Methodology: In this study, primary data were collected using a self-reported survey. A quantitative method was accordingly employed given a total sample of 300 existing and past employee respondents under a snowball sampling procedure. Results: Among others, this study reveals that there are greater tendencies by employees to overuse available access to making various pre-retirement withdrawals during employment not specifically meant for retirement purposes. Conclusion: Large past employees and incremental numbers of existing employees, who utilized different types of pre-retirement withdrawals of EPF scheme, respectively, are found to be exposed to the risk of not having adequate incomes at retirement. Therefore, the government and policy makers are recommended to increase the eligibility requirement levels in making pre-retirement withdrawals among the employees with necessary supervisions so that the pressing issue on the fast depletion of funds available at retirement can be mitigated.