SINGAPORE – About 85,000 Central Provident Fund (CPF) members who were born before 1948 will start receiving monthly payouts from their accounts, even if they did not opt to do so.
Members will be notified beforehand and will receive the payouts in their personal bank accounts in their coming birth month from June, the CPF Board announced on Wednesday.
This comes after positive feedback on a change introduced in 2018, under which members who were born on or after 1948 would automatically receive payouts.
Prior to 2018, many members neglected to instruct the CPF Board to start their payouts from the age of 65, the board said.
The board also announced that about 7,000 members now on CPF Life and future members will get higher monthly payouts if they have savings in their Ordinary and Special accounts that cannot be withdrawn as a lump sum.
CPF Life is an annuity scheme that provides lifelong monthly payouts that kick off when a member turns 65.
Members who have started getting their CPF Life payouts may have received subsequent inflows to their Ordinary and Special accounts.
If they have not set aside the Full Retirement Sum for their cohort, such inflows may not be withdrawable in a lump sum.
These savings will now be automatically annuitised for higher CPF Life payouts from October, and members will be notified beforehand, the CPF Board said.
If members have set aside the Full Retirement Sum, their savings in the Ordinary and Special accounts will not be automatically annuitised, so they remain withdrawable at any time.
Currently, members need to instruct the CPF Board to annuitise these savings so that they may receive a higher CPF Life payout.
Those who are not on CPF Life will be on the Retirement Sum Scheme, where members receive monthly payouts until their retirement savings run out. They can opt to join CPF Life after they turn 65, up until a month before they turn 80.
In his Budget speech on Tuesday, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Lawrence Wong announced that the minimum CPF monthly payout for Retirement Sum Scheme members will be raised from $250 to $350 a month.
About 112,000 members are expected to benefit from this change from June.
