The Bureau of Labor Insurance yesterday said that it has started distributing earnings from the Labor Pension Fund’s nearly NT$700 billion (US$21.3 billion) record-high gains to the personal accounts of about 12.92 million participants in the fund, with more than 50 percent pocketing more than NT$20,000 each.
About 7.49 million workers, or 58 percent of the total number of employees enrolled in the fund, received more than NT$20,000 each from the fund’s NT$698.97 billion gains last year, it said.
Another 4.67 million workers, or 36.2 percent, received more than NT$50,000 each, it added.
Photo: Lee Chin-hui, Taipei Times
The bureau also reported that the funds it manages posted gains of NT$108.7 billion in January — which translated into a rate of return of 1.61 percent — aided by a global financial market boom due in part to better US economic data.
However, the boom in global financial markets was offset to some extent by the emergence of Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索) and its alleged low-cost AI model, which raised concerns over investments in the technology, the bureau said.
Bureau data showed that 57.33 percent of the labor funds were invested overseas in January, while the remaining 42.67 percent were invested domestically.
The combined value of the funds — which includes the Labor Pension Fund, the Labor Retirement Fund, the Labor Insurance Fund, the Employment Insurance Fund and the Arrear Wage Payment Fund — totaled NT$7.13 trillion as of the end of January.
The value of assets in the new Labor Pension Fund, launched in 2015, totaled NT$4.68 trillion, the highest among the funds, with a rate of return of 1.47 percent for January, the bureau said.
The Labor Retirement Fund, established in 1984, had about NT$1.07 trillion in assets, with a rate of return of 2.3 percent.
People can check their pension allocations via the bureau’s online system at edesk.bli.gov.tw/me/#/na/login or in-person at any local bureau office, it said.
Those who have accounts with Taiwan Cooperative Bank (合庫銀行), E. Sun Bank (玉山銀行), Taishin Bank (台新銀行), Taipei Fubon Bank (台北富邦銀行), First Bank (第一銀行) or Chunghwa Post (中華郵政) can check their latest profit allocations at ATMs starting today, as the distribution takes time to process, the bureau said.
Distribution of the earnings from last year would be completed by the end of this month, it added.
Additional reporting by Lee Ching-hui and Sam Garcia
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