The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) is eyeing expansion into the Latin American market as part of its efforts at boosting its global assets portfolio to 32 percent this year from 28 percent in 2017.

CEO Shahril Ridza Ridzuan said an increase in the overseas asset portfolio would provide the fund with the necessary diversification and returns to meet contributors’ expectations.

“Like many global pension funds, we need to have a balanced portfolio and increase its exposure as much as possible to growth around the world,” he told reporters at the fund’s 2017 dividend briefing here today.

He said overseas investments also provided high returns, contributing 41.4 percent of the total income, despite only making up of only 28 percent of total investments last year.

“Our historical chart has shown that global assets give us the necessary diversification and exposure to growth, which is vital for the fund to continue to perform and provide the kind of return that our members expect,” he said.

He said diversification into overseas markets also helped the fund compensate for any downturn in any of its investment market and continue to grow.

As of last year, EPF has presence in 30 markets, primarily in the developed market, North Asia and Asean.

On Shariah savings, Shahril said, they had, as of last year, attracted about 700,000 contributors with a total size of RM68 billion from RM100 billion allocated for the savings.

On the converse, conventional savings had about 14 million contributors and total fund size of RM768.51 million, he said.

He said Shariah assets made up 47.5 percent of the fund’s total asset exposure and contributed 42.9 percent of total income last year.

“Shariah investments’ underperformance was attributed to oil and gas and mobile telecommunication sectors,” he said.

Nevertheless, he said, Shariah investments contributed 36 percent to conventional savings dividend distributions on top of 100 percent contributions to Shariah savings.

On Saturday, EPF announced 6.9 percent dividend for conventional savings with a payout amounting to RM44.15 billion and 6.4 percent dividend to Shariah savings, with payout amounting to RM3.98 billion.

- Bernama