Guide to CPF Retirement Sums (BRS/FRS/ERS) Projection

This Opinion post first appeared in my blog here: https://pwlcm.wordpress.com/2022/03/04/guide-to-cpf-retirement-sums-projection/

Refer to the list of acronyms on CPF in the following blog posts: https://pwlcm.wordpress.com/2022/01/06/acronym-cpf/

I am a CPF Volunteer. If you find this blog post providing useful information about CPF matters and it leads you to using CPF online services, you may fill in my full name “Tan Choong Hwee” in the “Referrer Name” field in some selected CPF online services.

In the Budget 2022 statement delivered on 18 February 2022, it was announced that the Basic Retirement Sum (BRS) would increase by 3.5% per year for the next 5 years, refer to item 218 in the statement: https://www.mof.gov.sg/singaporebudget/budget-2022/budget-statement/e-renew-and-strengthen-our-social-compact

In Annex E-3 of the statement, it gives the exact amount of BRS / Full Retirement Sum (FRS) / Enhanced Retirement Sum (ERS) for the next 5 years: https://www.mof.gov.sg/docs/librariesprovider3/budget2022/download/pdf/annexe3.pdf

It is obvious that the yearly increase is not exactly 3.5%, otherwise it won’t be whole numbers as stated in the annex. So I tried to figure out the mathematical formula behind the calculation of retirement sums.

Mathematical Formula for CPF Retirement Sums

Lets retrieve the historical data on FRS from the government’s portal to its datasets: https://data.gov.sg/dataset/full-retirement-sum

I have downloaded the FRS dataset from the above webpage, create an Excel spreadsheet from this dataset, and added columns for BRS, ERS and the annual % increase. I have also added the recently announced retirement sums for the next 5 years from the above mentioned Annex E-3.

A few observations:

• The retirement sum increased every year since 2003, except there was no announcement in year 2016.
• If we look at the dataset downloaded, the effective date was 1st July prior to 2016, and changed to 1st January after that.
• The annual % increase prior to 2016 was somewhat irregular.
• From 2017 to 2022, the annual % increase hover around 3%, and the BRS during this period is rounded to the nearest multiples of 500.
• For the next 5 years, the annual % increase are quite close to 3.5% and the BRS is rounded to the nearest multiples of 100.

With these observations, we can establish a simple linear projection formula to project next year retirement sum and round it to the nearest multiples using MROUND() function in Excel:

BRS this year = MROUND( BRS last year x (1 + % increase) , multiple )

CPF Retirement Sums Projection

Armed with this formula, I have done a projection on the BRS from 2028 onward, assuming the annual increase remains at 3.5% rounding to the nearest multiples of 100.