Chief investment officer Hazman Hilmi Sallahuddin attributed this substantial growth to the challenging conditions of 2022, which saw the public sector pension fund for civil servants encountering unrealised losses from its domestic and international investments.
KWAP also achieved a robust total fund investment return of 8.2% for the year.
“In FY2023, KWAP’s fund size grew to RM169.8 billion, marking a 7.4% increase from RM158.1 billion in 2022,” he said during KWAP’s FY2023 financial performance results announcement.
Hazman said that despite withdrawals totalling RM3 billion to partially finance the government’s pension liabilities, the net increase of RM11.7 billion year-on-year highlights KWAP’s ongoing commitment to prudently managing assets and optimise investment returns.
He added that KWAP has continued to focus on comprehensive investment planning and strategy formulation, adopting an inclusive approach to ensure sustainable growth.
For FY2023, KWAP’s asset allocation was as follows: 47.9% in public equity, 35.5% in fixed income, 5.3% in real estate, 4.8% in private equity, 2.1% in infrastructure, and 4.4% in the money market.
“The RM2.7 billion in contributions received in 2023 came from three main sources: federal government contributions, government shares, and employer contributions.
“The latter included contributions from statutory bodies, local authorities, and secondment agencies,” he said.
Additionally, KWAP has committed to strengthening Malaysia’s venture capital (VC) ecosystem through the Dana Perintis initiative launched in 2023.
With an allocation of RM500 million, the initiative aims to accelerate growth within the Malaysian entrepreneurial landscape, empower early-stage companies, drive innovation and enhance economic resilience.
Meanwhile, KWAP CEO Nik Amlizan said as of December 31, 2023, KWAP had served 790,772 Malaysian pension recipients.
“This represents a 2.8% increase, or 21,825 additional pension recipients, compared to 2022.
“Despite the increase of pension recipients in 2023, service-level agreement (SLA) performance for pension services achieved an annual weighted score of 99.4% in 2023, surpassing the performance threshold of 95% as set in the SLA with the public service department (JPA),” she said.
She added that KWAP had been awarded an unqualified audit opinion for FY2023 financial audit by the auditor-general and is preparing to introduce its first integrated annual report.