Financial retirement planning: a survey among provident fund contributing employees in a tertiary educational institution

Abstract

This study investigates the retirement planning behavior of EPF contributing workers of Sri Lankan tertiary educational institutions, considering their awareness, concerns, attitudes, and accessible information of financial planning choices during the pandemic. This article focuses especially on provident fund contributing employees recognizing the necessity of financial retirement planning because they are not eligible for any government-provided pension plans. The study is being conducted in a Non-State Tertiary Educational Institute with over 300 faculty members, both academic and administrative. Data was gathered using an online questionnaire covering demographic and socioeconomic information, understanding of EPF-related information, accessible financial planning options, and employee concerns and attitudes toward retirement from 103 responses. The statistical methods used are descriptive statistics and Chi-square test, to summarize the given data set and to evaluate how likely is that the observed distribution is due to chance. The tool used to derive the results is STATA. According to the results, awareness, availability of financial planning options, concerns, and attitudes all have a significant impact on retirement financial planning.