In a written reply to a question raised by a Legislative Council (LegCo) member today (2 July), Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, Christopher Hui said that, as at end-2024, about 4.8 million Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) scheme members held a total of around 11.2 million MPF accounts of various types (including contribution accounts, personal accounts and tax-deductible voluntary contribution accounts), hence, each scheme member held more than 2.3 MPF accounts on average.

There were 9.373 million accounts with an accrued benefit amount of $200,000 or below, according to the amount of accrued benefits. There were also 27,000 accounts with an accrued benefit amount of over $2 million.

The idea of allowing scheme members to borrow their MPF benefits for the purpose of home ownership must take into consideration the impact on scheme members' retirement savings, Hui added.

If the government was to relax the preservation requirement on MPF benefits and allow scheme members to borrow their MPF benefits to meet home ownership needs, the accrued benefits would fail to accumulate for value growth, thereby reducing scheme members' MPF benefits meant for their retirement and undermining the basic retirement protection for the working population.