The report (“ Hong Kong’s MPF needs an overhaul ”, December 1) was interesting but did not address in detail the key deficiencies of the Mandatory Provident Fund system from the point of view of ordinary working Hongkongers. A person aged 65 today will, based on average life expectancy , live for about another 20 years till their mid-80s. So, you need to divide what is projected to be in your MPF pot at age 65 by 240 to give you an idea of how much monthly income your MPF could provide in retirement. There are many rules of thumb which can guide you as to how much income you should plan on having when you retire – the simplest is to aim for between one-half and two-thirds of your pre-retirement income – a person with median pre-retirement earnings of HK$18,000 per month should, therefore, aim for HK$9,000 to HK$12,000 per month in retirement. Going by the MPF Schemes Authority website, a 25-year-old with median earnings might expect, at a conservative rate of projected investment growth, to have an MPF pot of about HK$1 million at age 65. For an average person, that converts into a monthly income in retirement of HK$4,000, about the same as the poverty line , and way below the bottom of the rule-of-thumb range. Even if you take the MPFA’s optimistic view of future investment growth, you are still very unlikely to reach the bottom of the range. And that’s as good as it gets – the situation gets progressively worse for anyone starting to contribute to their MPF after their mid-20s. The biggest risk, which is almost always overlooked, is that your MPF pot will simply run out if you draw on it too much too quickly or if you live too long. What happens then? Why isn’t the government thinking of underpinning this, or guaranteeing it in some way? Is it because senior government employees’ own pensions are guaranteed to be payable for their whole lifetime, come what may? Two MPF steps would go a long way to help Hong Kong retirees The worst aspect of the MPF is, of course, the state-sanctioned theft by the “ offsetting mechanism ” – according to information from the Labour Department, the delay in removing it is due to “the immense difficulty of drafting an enabling bill” – another example of the poke-in-the-eye contempt the government shows us these days. Lee Faulkner, Lamma; fellow, Institute and Faculty of Actuaries