Why Dividend Parity for EPF Conventional-Syariah Savings?

 

The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) has beaten “a 19-to-1 against odds” for a back-to-back parity for its 2025 and 2024 dividends for conventional and syariah savings. This may have raised eyebrows among conventional saving members of possible hidden hands.

For the record, EPF had on February 28 declared a dividend rate of 6.15% for Simpanan Konvensional with a total payout of RM67.1 bil and a similar 6.15% for Simpanan Shariah with a payout of RM12.5 bil, thus bringing total distribution for 2025 to RM79.6 bil.

 

Although the 2025 dividend rate was slightly lower to the 6.3% for 2024, the uniformity of both the conventional and syariah rates has led to trending news site The Coverage Media to comment: 

Mathematically, in a purely continuous model (like returns following normal distributions), the probability of two distinct giant funds producing exactly the same dividend rate (to two decimal places) in any given year is effectively zero. Even conservatively estimating discrete possibilities, the chance of them matching in two specific consecutive years is only about 4.9% – odds against it of roughly 19:1. Striking this ‘jackpot’ twice in a row? That’s truly legendary, almost magical! (The Coverage Media) 

For the record, the EPF syariah savings was introduced in 2017 as an option to members who prefer their retirement savings to invest solely in assets that adhere to Islamic principles.

There used to be a ~0.50% gap between in favour of conventional savings till 2023 – the first year of the Madani government rule – when the gap was reduced to 0.10%. 

The “mathematically unlikely” parity has EPF conventional savings members foreseeing the Islamic savings to perform even better if not surpassing conventional savings in the run-up to the 16^th General Election (GE16). On the other hand, some conventional savings members wondered over the likelihood of “dividend from the conventional savings being passed down to the Syariah-compliant savings to equalise both of them” which is “not impossible to do with some creative accounting”. 

If such is the case, then syariah-compliant proceeds from the conventional savings scheme may come from “haram stocks”. Therefore, “while the Syariah savings is Islamic, the action of equalising the dividends for both funds is not Islamic”. And if both are the same then why have two options? 

Don’t you think it is just incredible that haram and non-haram stocks or portfolios are identical in their returns and for 2 years? 

Reference:

PMX mocked for “GE16 vote buying” via 2nd straight EPF conventional-syariah savings dividend parity, Focus Malaysia, 2 March 2026