Malaysia’s Employees Provident Fund (EPF) is on track to deliver a healthy dividend for 2025, with analysts from The Edge projecting a payout of at least 5.5%, and potentially as high as 6% if its second-half performance is strong.
In mid-July, EPF announced that its total investment income for the first six months of 2025 hit RM38.92 billion, marking a 3% year-on-year increase.
Analysts’ projection
According to The Edge’s analysis, after excluding RM440 million in unrealised foreign exchange gains—which cannot be distributed as dividends, its distributable income stood at RM38.48 billion.
This amount alone is sufficient to support a 3% dividend payout, with analysts noting that a good showing in the latter half of the year would push the full-year dividend above 5.5%.
EPF is well-positioned to match or even slightly improve on last year’s performance. However, repeating the 6.3% dividend rate declared in 2024 will be challenging, as it would require significantly stronger earnings in the second half of 2025.
Even if EPF’s income this year surpasses last year’s, the dividend rate is unlikely to exceed 2024’s 6.3%,” the report stated.
Bigger fund, bigger challenge
Sustaining a 6% annual dividend has become increasingly difficult for EPF due to its rapidly expanding fund size.
Driven by robust employment and rising wages, the fund’s total assets swelled to RM1.31 trillion as of June 2025.
This means EPF must consistently generate higher investment income just to maintain dividend levels.
