Bangkok, November 10, 2015 ? SEC promotes another long-term savings channel for exiting employees by allowing them to transfer the total benefits in the provident funds (PVD) to retirement mutual fund (RMF) and maintain the same benefits given to active PVD members in the event that the employers? PVD is dissolved or the employees? membership ends.

The Capital Market Supervisory Board (CMSB) has recently approved transfer of PVD to RMF to support long-term savings and investment of employees. The governing regulations amended by virtue of the Provident Fund Act (No.4) B.E. 2558 (2015) will come into force as from November 20, 2015.

SEC Secretary-General Rapee Sucharitakul said: ?Promoting long?term savings and long-term investment has always been an important part of the SEC mission. The latest milestone is the permission for transfer of PVD to RMF. This is to allow employees to maintain the total sum of their ongoing savings in a long-term investment vehicle as long as they wish should they find themselves in an unfavorable position, for example, the employers going out of business, the new employers not having a PVD privilege, or the former employers limiting the retention period for the PVD benefits of the leaving employees. Any of such incident would normally oblige the employees to withdraw the total PVD benefits before retirement, which may consequently subject the employees to a lump sum tax obligation.?  

Under the governing regulations revised under the PVD Act (No.4) B.E. 2015, an employee transferring PVD to RMF would benefit from continuous long-term savings, freedom to choose any investment policy of their preference and tax privileges equivalent to retention of the total benefits in PVD.       

In addition, the transferred money from PVD to RMF is not considered a usual investment in RMF and thus not subject to the RMF investment continuity requirement. Employees are also entitled to transfer of the remaining PVD membership to RMF to be eligible for a tax break provided that all qualification requirements of the Revenue Department are met. In any case, the total transferred sum is not entitled to annual personal income tax exemption.

"The SEC encourages Thai people to get serious about their long-term savings and investment plans to be able to maintain a good quality of life after retirement. This PVD to RMF transfer permission is a big step toward such goal,? added Mr. Rapee.

Meanwhile, TMB Asset Management Co., Ltd. and Tisco Asset Management Co., Ltd. are ready to accommodate PVD transfers to the existing RMFs as they have already put in place account segregation systems and separate registers for different types of unitholders. Other asset management companies are improving their internal work systems to facilitate the transfer service as well.