MPF Full Portability Opens December 21 for About One Million Workers. December Is Not the Last Chance

Workers who started their current job on or after May 1, 2025 can move their employer-funded MPF balance to a scheme they choose. The first transfer window lasts 11 days, but the right to transfer does not expire with the year.

The Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority said on Sunday, October 25, that about one million workers will qualify for the first phase of MPF full portability when it opens on December 21. The start date remains subject to the Legislative Council completing its scrutiny of the relevant legal notice, the authority’s guidance says.

For those workers, the change adds the employer’s mandatory contributions from their current job to the MPF they can move out of the employer’s chosen scheme. They have been able to move their own mandatory contributions once a calendar year since 2012. Moving either balance is optional; the authority cautions that a transfer does not guarantee a better return.

The MPF full portability cutoff follows your current job

Phase one applies to employees who entered the workforce or changed employment on or after May 1, 2025. Someone who began a new job on May 2, 2025 qualifies, even if they had worked for years before that. Someone who has stayed with the same employer since 2020 does not yet gain the right to move that employer-funded balance, whatever its size. That worker can still move the employee-funded portion under the older Employee Choice Arrangement.

The date coincides with the abolition of the MPF offsetting arrangement. Employer contributions associated with service before May 1, 2025 may still be used to offset severance or long-service payments for that earlier period, the MPFA says. Extending full portability to workers whose current employment began before the cutoff therefore needs further legislation. The government said on October 16 that it aims to introduce a phase-two bill by mid-2027; it has not announced a phase-two start date.

The legal boundary matters more than the advertised million. That is the MPFA’s estimate of workers covered at launch, not a count of people who have decided to transfer or a promise that every account will be eligible.

What can move, and where the next contribution goes

An eligible employee can transfer the entire accrued balance derived from the current employer’s mandatory contributions to a personal account in an MPF scheme of the employee’s choice. The employee-funded balance can move too. The MPFA says the two portions may be transferred together or separately, even to different schemes, generally once each calendar year. Contributions from former jobs that sit in the current contribution account can be transferred in their entirety at any time; voluntary contributions depend on the original scheme’s rules.

The destination must be a personal account. If the employee does not have one in the chosen scheme, it must be opened before the transfer request can begin. Instructions go through the eMPF platform, and the employer need not arrange the transfer. The employer will, however, keep paying both portions of future contributions into its existing scheme. Full portability moves the accrued balance, not the payroll route.

It is not a release of every worker’s entire MPF account. The new right covers a defined part of a defined group of accounts.

Eleven days for the 2026 allowance, then a 2027 allowance

The MPFA says an eligible member may initiate a 2026 transfer from December 21 through December 31. That is the deadline for using the 2026 allowance. The 2027 calendar-year allowance opens January 1, so missing December means losing one year’s opportunity, not losing full portability altogether. The annual right does not accumulate if unused.

A transfer has a cost that a calendar date does not show. According to the MPFA’s transfer guidance, there is generally a one- to two-week interval after the original trustee sells the fund units and before the new trustee buys replacements. The money is uninvested during that interval, so a member could miss a rise or avoid a fall. The authority tells members to compare fund choices, performance and fees, and to weigh their own investment objectives and risk tolerance before moving.

An independent analysis by Finkit makes another distinction: compare fees between similar funds, rather than treating the cheapest fund in any category as the best alternative. A difference of half a percentage point in annual fees on a HK$200,000 balance would equal HK$1,000 over a year before investment returns or changes in the balance. That arithmetic does not say which fund, if any, a worker should choose.

The MPFA says an average of HK$4.5 billion a year moved under the existing employee-choice arrangement from 2021 through 2025. The new right makes employer-funded balances available to eligible workers too, but that historical figure does not predict how many will transfer in December. For now, the useful question is simpler: did your current job begin on or after May 1, 2025, and would another scheme actually suit you better?