teachers. Members of occupational retirement schemes with specific exemptions, and foreign citizens who work in Hong Kong for periods shorter than 13 months or who are covered by another country's retirement system may also be exempt. Under the scheme, the choice of MPF provider is the province of the employer, with employees having no say. Employees are expected to join the scheme administered by the MPF provider of their new employers when they change jobs. The employer and the employee each contribute 5 per cent (a sum equal to 10%) of the salary of employee whose earnings are above a certain threshold to funds run by banks, insurers or fund houses. Total contributions are capped at HK$1,500 a month. Employees and self-employed are required to contribute 5% of their earnings to their MPF fund. When the scheme was launched, the upper relevant income limit for contributions was $20,000. The lower and upper thresholds for relevant earnings are subject to periodic adjustment. An employee's MPF assets are fully vested, and are portable when the employee changes employers. Benefits that have accrued under the scheme of a former employer can be transferred to a scheme operated by the new employer. There are strict guidelines on the types of assets in the investment funds. However, MPF providers may offer more than one investment option constituted along the guidelines to its members through different funds, thus employees may build their own investment portfolio out of the funds provided by the provider chosen by their employers. Employees may elect on the asset allocation among different funds available from their providers, but may only do so for their part of the retirement contribution. Hong Kong employees and their employers started contributing to the scheme as early as 2000, but the employees can only withdraw accrued benefits at 65 and other specified conditions under the regulation. Only since 1 November 2013, employees were given freedom to transfer their fund assets to any provider they liked, once a year. However, only the portion of the fund assets corresponding to their contributions could be transferred. Offset of Long Service Payment/Severance Payment is a feature of the MPF since the inception. The legislation permits employers to use contributions they have made to offset payments made to employees in respect of long service/redundancy or layoff. According to analysis of offsets by unions between 2008 and 2014, it was found that 37