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The Government has formally launched the Life Annuity Scheme last month. To gauge public opinions on the Scheme, a telephone survey was conducted from 26 to 31 July 2018 by the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). 702 respondents aged 18 or above were successfully interviewed, with a response rate of 38.5%.  The sampling error is + or –3.70 percentage points at a confidence level of 95%.

Major findings are summarised as follows:

The intentions to participate in the Scheme for both the respondents aged 65 or above (eligible applicants of the scheme) and the younger were recorded in the survey. Only 7.5% of those who aged 65 or above said they “definitely would”, 10.8% lower than the figure (18.3%) from a similar survey on the same topic conducted in April 2017 when the government first introduced the Scheme. 19.5% said they “probably would”, a slightly 0.5% increase compared with last year’s number. 49.1% said they “would not” participate in, 10.5% higher than that of last year. The Chi-Square test shows that the difference between the distributions of the percentages on this question from those two surveys are statistically significant. For those who were below 65 years old, 12.3% and 41.5% said they “definitely would” or “probably would” respectively if they were 65 years old now. 32.1% said they “would not” participate in, a significant increase of 7.8% compared with last year’s survey. The Chi-Square test on the difference between the distributions of the percentages on this question from those two surveys is also statistically significant.

The main reason for those aged 65 or above who would not participate in the Scheme or were not sure was financial consideration. “Lack of capital or insufficient money” was the most mentioned reason (48.3%), followed by “lack of understanding of the Scheme” (18.1%) and “return is not attractive” (12.1%). The main reason for those aged less than 65 was “lack of understanding of the Scheme” (27.1%), “preferring to invest on my own” (23.9%) and “lack of capital or insufficient money” (19.0%). The Government should consider strengthening public understanding of the scheme and illustrating the benefits of the scheme compared to other investment options.

58.2% of respondents said they “strongly support/support” the annuity scheme, which was 7.8% lower than the figure from last year’s survey. Meanwhile, the percentage of “strongly oppose/oppose” was 26.1%, 6.2% higher than last year. The Chi-Square test shows that the difference between the distributions of the percentages on this question from those two surveys are statistically significant.

In addition, the survey asked the respondents whether they would encourage their aged family members to participate in the annuity scheme. 9.9% said “definitely would” and 39.2% said “probably would”, which was 4.7% and 3.6% lower than last year. 34.9% said they “would not”, 5.5% higher than last year’s figure. The Chi-Square test also shows that the differences in the figures of the two surveys are statistically significant.

Lastly, 44.6% of the respondents believed that setting the maximum premium at HK$ 1 million was “appropriate”, whereas 24.9% regarded it as “too high” and 10.5% “too low”. As to the minimum premium at HK$50,000, 49.7% of the respondents said it was “appropriate”, 25.9% believed it was “too low,” and those having chosen “too high” accounted for 6.3% only.