Bar Council fine-tuning proposal for EPF
18/03/2007 Sunday Star By Shaila Koshy

KUALA LUMPUR: If your spouse has failed to name you and your children as beneficiaries of his or her savings in the Employees Provident Fund (EPF), you will not lose out on his or her death under a new proposal.

A proposal by the Bar Council – which has been accepted in principle by EPF – is expected to pave the way soon for the revocation of beneficiaries nominated prior to the marriage.

The Bar Council’s Committee on Law Reform and Special Areas chairman Datuk M. Ramachelvam said the committee had proposed the amendment to the EPF Regulations 2001 because it had received numerous complaints where widows and children had been left with nothing because the late husband or father had failed to change his earlier EPF nomination.

”This is a matter of concern because only 4.3 million of 11.3 million members have made nominations and of these, 26% have not made revisions since their first nominations.

“A husband may have willed his EPF savings to his wife and children but a will does not supercede an EPF nomination.

“Many don’t realise that even a will made before marriage, except in certain circumstances, is revoked when the testator (will maker) gets married,” he added.

He said EPF had asked the committee to fine-tune its proposal for the event of a marriage to automatically void an EPF member’s nomination of beneficiaries, similar to what is already in practice in Singapore.

“At a meeting with Rusma Ibrahim (EPF deputy chief executive officer for organisational development and strategic planning) and other EPF officials on March 9, we were given two weeks to fine-tune our proposed amendment,” said Ramachelvam in a phone interview from China yesterday.

Ramachalevam said that once EPF officials approved the revised amendment, it would not take long for it to come into effect.

“Since it is an amendment to the EPF Regulations and not the EPF Act, all it takes is for the EPF Board to ratify it and for the minister in charge to sign.

“We want to make it clear that this proposal does not take away a member’s right to nominate anyone. She or he can re-nominate the same person(s) after marriage.”

He added that the committee’s proposal was for all members, regardless of whether they were non-Muslims or Muslims.