- Since 3 May 2026 every Hong Kong MPF scheme is administered on the eMPF Platform, so every employer now does MPF there.
- Mandatory contributions are due on or before the 10th of each month, and paying late attracts a 5% surcharge on the default amount.
- You must enrol each new employee aged 18 to 64 within the first 60 days of employment.
- The platform’s 90-day enrolment Action Item is not an extension of that 60-day duty. It only governs how long eMPF keeps your saved data.
- Employer and employee each contribute 5% of relevant income, between HK$7,100 and HK$30,000 a month.
- Every month: remittance statement and contributions on or before the 10th. Late means a 5% surcharge.
- Every new hire (18 to 64): enrol within 60 days of their first day.
- The rate: 5% each from employer and employee, on relevant income between HK$7,100 and HK$30,000 a month.
- The trap: the platform's 90-day Action Item window is about saved data, not your statutory deadline.
Managing your MPF employer contribution in Hong Kong now runs entirely through the mandatory eMPF platform. While the system is new, the strict deadlines and costly late fees remain exactly the same. You didn’t choose this migration, but the compliance burden still sits entirely with you.
In this guide, you’ll learn:
- What the 3 May 2026 onboarding completion actually changed for you
- A calendar of every eMPF obligation and its deadline
- Why the 60-day rule and the 90-day Action Item are different clocks
- What contributions cost, and what late payment costs
- Whether this is worth running yourself
What actually changed when eMPF onboarding finished?
The administration moved, but the rules didn’t.
On 3 May 2026, the MPFA confirmed that all 12 MPF trustees had successfully completed their onboarding. According to the MPFA Chairman, this final milestone brought 300,000 employers, 5 million scheme members, 11 million accounts, and over HK$1.5 trillion in assets onto a single, centralized system.
The platform originally launched on 26 June 2024, rolling out in phases. That transition period is now officially over. You no longer need to wonder if or when your trustee is migrating—everyone is on the platform.
Your eMPF calendar of obligations
The system is new. The statutory clock isn’t. Here’s what you have to do, when it’s due, and what missing it costs.
| Trigger | What you do | Deadline | If you miss it |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-time setup | Register the employer account and nominate an authorised person | No deadline. Expect activation within two working days | You can’t submit contributions at all |
| New hire aged 18 to 64 | Enrol the employee in an MPF scheme | Within 60 days of their first day | Statutory breach |
| Pending enrolment | Complete the enrolment Action Item on the platform | 90 days (platform rule, not law) | Saved data is deleted and you re-key it. Your 60-day statutory clock keeps running |
| Monthly payroll | Submit the remittance statement and pay mandatory contributions | On or before the 10th of each month | 5% surcharge on default contributions |
| Termination | Make the departing employee’s final contribution | By the 10th of the month after their last day | 5% surcharge on default contributions |
Watch row three. The 90-day window is an administrative feature of the platform, not a legal extension. It’s the one line in this table that can mislead you into missing a deadline that matters, and the next section breaks down why.
How do you register your employer account and name an authorised person?
You apply, then wait for activation. The eMPF Platform notifies your company authorised person by email or SMS within two working days of receiving your registration application, per the eMPF employer FAQ. Until the account is activated, you can’t submit anything, so register before your first contribution is due, not on the deadline.
The authorised person is the part worth thinking about. They act on the company’s behalf on the platform, so pick the person who already runs payroll, not the most senior name on the letterhead. Every notification, deadline reminder, and submission confirmation goes to them. A director who checks that inbox monthly is how a 60-day enrolment window quietly runs out.
Change the authorised person before they leave, not after. If the only person with platform access resigns and handover waits until their last week, you're arranging access while a contribution deadline runs. Five minutes in month one, an urgent problem in month twelve.
How long do you have to enrol a new employee?
Sixty days. The MPFA requires employers to enrol employees aged 18 to 64 in an MPF scheme within the first 60 days of employment, as set out in the MPFA employer FAQ on MPF obligations.
That’s the statutory duty, and it applies regardless of what any system tells you. The platform is where you do the enrolment, not what decides when it’s due.
If you’re hiring in Hong Kong for the first time, the wider set of obligations around that first hire sits with your Employer’s Return (BIR56A and IR56B) filings too, which run on a separate IRD timetable.
Why aren’t the 60-day rule and the 90-day Action Item the same deadline?
Because different bodies set them, and missing them costs you different things. This is the most useful distinction on this page.
| The 60 days | The 90 days | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Your statutory duty as an employer | A platform housekeeping rule |
| Clock starts | The employee’s first day | When you open the Action Item |
| Miss it and | You’re in breach | Your saved data is deleted |
The eMPF employer FAQ states that enrolment must be completed before the Action Item’s specified due date, within 90 days, otherwise any saved data is automatically deleted after the deadline.
Here’s the trap. You start an enrolment, it sits half-finished, and the platform shows you 90 days. Your 60-day statutory clock has been running since the employee’s first day. Pace yourself to the number on the screen
When are MPF contributions due, and what does paying late cost?
Contributions are due on or before the 10th day of each month. Miss it and you pay a surcharge of 5% of the default contributions.
The contribution itself is 5% from you and 5% from the employee, applied between a floor and a ceiling. For monthly-paid employees:
- Below HK$7,100 a month: the employee contributes nothing. You still contribute 5%.
- HK$7,100 to HK$30,000: both sides contribute 5% of relevant income.
- Above HK$30,000: each side caps at HK$1,500 a month.
Those minimum and maximum relevant income levels come from the MPFA guidance on mandatory contributions for employees. Anything paid above the cap is a voluntary MPF contribution and follows different rules.
Diarise the 10th. The surcharge is a percentage of what you owe, not a flat fine, so it grows with your payroll as you hire. Other statutory dates carry their own penalties for missing deadlines.
Below the HK$7,100 floor the two sides stop being symmetrical. An employee earning less than that isn't required to contribute, but you still are, at 5% of what they actually earned. Part-time and junior staff are where this shows up, and assuming no employee contribution means no contribution is how a small default lands on a clean account.
What do you do on eMPF when an employee leaves?
Two things: submit their final contribution and update their status to terminated. Do both, or the account stays open on the platform.
- The deadline: the final contribution is due on or before the 10th day of the month following the employee’s last day.
- Several leavers at once: process them individually, or use eMPF’s bulk upload.
- What eMPF doesn’t cover: the platform handles MPF contributions only. Severance Payment (SP) and Long Service Payment (LSP) run under separate statutory employment rules and are calculated and paid outside eMPF entirely.
What is MPF administration costing now?
Lower scheme administration fees don’t mean a cheaper payroll bill. eMPF has cut fund administration fees sharply, but those cuts land on the investment funds, not on what you pay out each month.
Your direct employer costs haven’t moved:
- The mandatory 5% employer contribution
- The staff time to run monthly submissions
- The 5% surcharge if you miss the deadline
At fund level, the fees have fallen. According to the MPFA Chairman, centralising administration on eMPF has brought average fund fees down like this:
| Period | Average fund fee |
|---|---|
| Before eMPF | 0.58% (58 bps) |
| Two years after launch | 0.37% (37 bps) |
| From 1 April 2026 | 0.29% (29 bps) |
| Long-term projection | 0.20% to 0.25% (20 to 25 bps) |
Those reductions improve your employees’ fund balances. They don’t reduce your payroll cost. What does affect your bottom line is the deduction: employer contributions are deductible against profits tax, subject to the IRD’s rules.
Should you run eMPF yourself, or hand it over?
Volume and churn decide this, not headcount.
You can run it yourself if:
- You have a handful of employees and the roster rarely changes
- Nobody joins or leaves mid-month
- Everyone sits above the HK$7,100 floor, so the calculation repeats
- One person owns the 10th, and it’s in their calendar
It’s worth handing over if:
- You’re hiring regularly, so a 60-day clock starts several times a quarter
- Joiners and leavers land mid-month and the pro-rating changes
- You have staff either side of the income floor or ceiling
- The person doing it also covers month-end, so the 10th competes for their attention
For two employees on steady salaries, this is a short monthly task and paying someone to do it is waste. For a team of eight with three joiners a quarter, it’s four separate clocks and a pro-rating calculation every month.
How Sleek runs payroll and MPF submissions
If you’ve concluded the monthly submission is a job rather than a task, that’s the point at which handing it over pays for itself.
With Sleek, you can:
- Hand over the monthly cycle: Sleek’s Hong Kong payroll services cover the payroll run, the MPF remittance statement and the submission, timed against the 10th.
- Keep the joiner and leaver clocks tracked: the 60-day deadline on every new hire and the final contribution on every departure, tracked rather than remembered.
- Consolidate the compliance stack: payroll alongside Hong Kong accounting services, so one team holds your wage records and your accounts.
- Work with a named contact: a dedicated contact in English or Mandarin rather than a ticket queue, which is what the handover month needs.
The deadlines don’t change when you outsource. Whose problem they are does.
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FAQs about the eMPF Platform for employers
You register as an employer in your own right. Your trustee’s onboarding moved the scheme’s administration onto the platform, but it didn’t create your employer account or nominate your authorised person. Those are your actions, and until the account is activated you can’t submit a remittance statement.
Yes. MPF and salaries tax reporting are separate obligations to separate regulators, and eMPF has no bearing on the IRD side. Your Employer’s Return (BIR56A and IR56B) runs on its own timetable, alongside the rest of your Hong Kong compliance calendar.
Not always. The 60-day employment rule doesn’t apply to casual employees in the construction and catering industries, so enrolment for those workers follows a different arrangement. If you hire casually in either industry, check the position before applying the 60-day clock by default.
The enrolment duty covers employees aged 18 to 64, so someone who’s 65 or older on their first day sits outside that band. Confirm the position for anyone near the boundary: an employee turning 65 partway through employment isn’t the same case as one hired at 66.
Yes, and it’s the common arrangement for companies that outsource payroll. The provider runs the calculation and the submission, while the statutory obligation stays with you as the employer. You’re handing over the work and the deadline tracking, not the legal responsibility.
