Reaching 55 - Your CPF Investment Account?

Upon reaching 55, you will have to decide what to do with your CPF Investment Account as you have the option to continue with your CPF Investment Account or close it.

So it is for you to decide for yourself based on Cost-wise and Interest-wise.

Cost-wise

To close CPF Investment Account and transfer share counters to CDP:

• One time cost per share counter
• Central Depository (Pte) Ltd (“CDP”) imposes a transfer fee of $10.70 (inclusive of GST) for every share counter transferred from your CPF Investment Account to your CDP Account.

To maintain CPF Investment Account:

• Running costs
• Service Charge: S$2 per counter/unit trust per quarter
• Transaction Charge: S$2 per 1,000 shares/units or part thereof per transaction, subject to a maximum of S$20

So it is better to consolidate, enlarge and to retain only higher value share counters for the quarterly service charges to be cost-effective.

Interest-wise

This is the most tricky part as money returned to CPF OA after sales of your share counters will continue to earn compound INTEREST at current rate of 2.5% and under current low bank interest rate of less than 1%; this option may look attractive depending on your size of your investment per share counter despite incuring quarterly service charge of $2. So you may have to do your own maths and decide for yourself - to close or not?

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