The questions you asked,
answered.

Yes. PERA is personal, voluntary, and portable. Any working Filipino with a TIN can open and fund a PERA account directly, with no employer involvement. You just reach out to an accredited PERA Administrator to open the account.

The administrator files for your PERA Tax Credit Certificate, worth 5% of your contributions for the year. You submit it with your annual income tax return to offset your tax due, or your HR applies it in your year-end withholding adjustment. The credit is yours whether or not your employer participates.

A PERA contributor needs to be of legal age, have a TIN, and have the capacity to contract. Someone without current employment can still qualify if they meet these and have income to contribute, for example a self-employed spouse. For an Overseas Filipino, a spouse or child may even open a PERA on the OF's behalf.

Not ahead of time. You can open and contribute on your own. The one reason to loop them in is if you want them to match your contribution, since the employer match is what unlocks the enhanced employer deduction. To use your 5% credit, you give HR the certificate at year-end.

No. There is no required minimum, monthly or annual. You can start small and add when you are able.

PERA is flexible. There is no obligation to contribute every year, and you can put in a single lump sum rather than monthly amounts. Just remember the annual cap applies per year, and that the tax-free withdrawal still requires reaching age 55 with at least 5 years of participation.

₱200,000 a year is the cap that earns PERA incentives for a local contributor (₱400,000 for OFWs, and ₱200,000 for each spouse). You may put in more, but the excess does not earn the 5% credit and the tax-free treatment, and is handled as ordinary funds.

Yes. You can fund up to the annual limit in one go or spread it out across the year, whichever suits your cash flow.

Yes. There is no upper age limit to open a PERA. As long as the account is held for at least 5 years, the contributor can make a qualified withdrawal.

Yes. Someone over 60 can open and contribute to a PERA. They would still need at least 5 years of participation before a fully tax-free qualified withdrawal.

No. The 55/5 rule needs both conditions, age 55 and at least 5 years of participation, and a single lump sum does not compress the 5-year holding period. You can still open a PERA close to or after retirement and benefit from the tax-free growth, but the fully tax-free qualified withdrawal only opens up once the 5 years have passed.

A qualified, fully tax-free withdrawal is available under the 55/5 rule: age 55 or older and at least 5 years of contributions. You can take it as a lump sum or as a pension, or simply leave it invested and keep growing it. Withdrawing earlier means a 20% penalty on the income earned and returning the tax credits you already claimed, though your principal always comes back in full. There are penalty-free exceptions for hospitalization over 30 days, permanent disability, and death.

Nothing is lost. PERA is portable and belongs to the employee, not the company. After resigning they keep the account and can continue contributing on their own through the ezPERA app. The only thing that stops is the employer's facilitation and any employer match. If they later join a company that does not offer PERA, the account simply continues as a personal one.

Your principal is always returned in full. What you receive on top depends on how the invested funds performed over the years, since PERA grows through market-linked investments rather than a fixed return. Under a qualified withdrawal, those earnings come to you tax-free.

For the employee's own 5% credit, no, an employee can open a PERA without the employer. What needs the employer is the employer-side benefit: to claim the enhanced deduction, the company sets up the program with an accredited administrator and contributes for its employees. You coordinate with the administrator, like Zalamea, not a government office.

You engage an accredited PERA Administrator who handles account opening, KYC, contribution processing, certificates, and reporting. We walk your HR and finance team through plan design and onboarding for your specific headcount. The simplest start is a short briefing, which you can request at the bottom of this page.

Yes. The employer match is voluntary. In a tight year you can reduce or pause it. The trade-off is that the enhanced 150% deduction applies only when the employer contributes at least as much as the employee's own contribution, so pausing the match means giving up that extra incentive for that period, not breaking any rule.

Both work. The employer can contribute more than the employee, an equal amount, or nothing at all, depending on company policy. For the 150% deduction the only condition is that the employer's share is at least equal to the employee's. And yes, an employee can contribute on their own with no employer share.

Yes. An existing personal PERA does not block employer participation. We align the employer program with employees' existing accounts during onboarding so the company can route and match contributions and claim its deduction. We will sort out the account details so there is no duplication.

Yes. The PERA Tax Credit Certificate is applied against income tax due, so when HR reflects it in the year-end adjustment it reduces the employee's net withholding tax for the year. The employee submits the certificate to HR to have it applied.

You earn a 5% credit for each year you contribute, within the annual cap. So it is recurring, tied to your contributions year by year, not a single one-time benefit.

Under RR 7-2023, a PERA Tax Credit Certificate is valid for up to 5 years from its date of issuance. The clock runs from when the certificate is issued, not from when you made the contribution. And while a certificate has not yet been issued, the credit right does not lapse. Once issued, use it within the 5-year window.

You are protected by that issuance-based 5-year clock. When a certificate comes through, the employee submits it to HR and it is applied to that year's year-end withholding adjustment, or filed with the annual income tax return. The administrator is responsible for filing the applications, so this is largely handled for you.

This is the one item we are still confirming. Whether an entity that is already tax-exempt, or one under a special or gross-income tax regime such as the 5% SCIT, can use the additional 50% employer deduction is not yet settled in the current regulations. We are seeking a direct ruling from the BIR and will update this page once we have it. The employee-side benefits still apply regardless.

No, and it is worth being clear about this. PERA returns come from accredited market-linked investments, so the investment value is not government-guaranteed and can move up or down. What the framework does guarantee is the structure around your money: the funds are held by an accredited custodian bank, separate from the administrator, and the whole system is regulated by the BSP, SEC, BIR, and Insurance Commission.

Your principal is returned in full on withdrawal. The earnings on top depend on fund performance, which varies year to year and is not guaranteed. Because PERA is a long-horizon vehicle, short-term dips have time to recover, and more conservative fund options exist for those who want lower volatility.

The main one is ordinary investment risk: the value of market-linked funds can rise and fall, and returns are not guaranteed. You manage this by choosing a fund that matches your risk profile and time horizon, and by keeping the long-term view that PERA is designed for. The tax benefits attach to your contributions, so they are not erased by market movement.

There is no fixed or specific dividend rate. Because funds can be invested in different accredited outlets, returns differ by product and by year. As of December 2025, BSP noted that 11 of the 13 PERA UITFs had outperformed their benchmarks over a covered period, but past performance is not a guarantee of future results.

Yes on both. The contributor has full discretion over investment choices, and you can move between accredited products. There is a 15-day window to transfer between PERA products or administrators without triggering early-withdrawal penalties.

We cannot point you to a single best fund, since the right choice depends on your age, goals, and comfort with risk. Generally, money market and bond-type funds sit at the more conservative end and equity funds at the higher-risk, higher-potential-return end. We match you to suitable options through a short risk questionnaire rather than giving a one-size-fits-all recommendation.

PERA is not a pooled government fund. Your money sits in your own account, invested in private accredited products and safekept by an accredited custodian bank that is separate from the administrator who manages the account. Several regulators, the BSP, SEC, BIR, and Insurance Commission, oversee the participants. By law your PERA assets also cannot be assigned, pledged, garnished, or seized. The safeguards are built into how the account is held and supervised.

Both are government-backed and let earnings grow tax-free, so MP2 is solid in its own right. The big difference is that PERA gives a 5% tax credit on what you contribute, which MP2 does not, and PERA lets you choose how your money is invested across several fund types, while MP2 is a single managed fund on a 5-year cycle. PERA is built for the long term, with tax-free qualified withdrawal from age 55. Many people use both: MP2 for medium-term goals, PERA for retirement so they capture the credit. Returns for both vary and are not guaranteed.

No. The minimum retirement pay under RA 7641 is a separate, mandatory obligation and cannot be offset by PERA. PERA is a voluntary layer on top of RA 7641 and SSS or GSIS, not a substitute. In fact, an employer may contribute to an employee's PERA only while it complies with its mandatory SSS and Labor Code retirement-pay obligations.

No. PERA does not replace the statutory retirement benefit or your existing plan. The best way to see it is as an enhancement to total rewards that sits alongside RA 7641, SSS or GSIS, and any company retirement plan, not as the whole retirement program on its own.

Yes, and this is a good way to use it. We can design the PERA program to sit cleanly beside your existing trust plan, so the reporting, tax treatment, and administration line up rather than duplicate. Since this depends on your current plan, the practical next step is a short working session with our team.

Yes. A contributor holds one PERA account with one administrator at a time, but within it you can invest across several accredited products, for example a UITF and bonds. It is one account, multiple investment outlets, not multiple separate account numbers.

It should not. You keep one PERA account tied to your TIN. When your employer joins the program, the employer's contributions are aligned to your existing account rather than opening a second one. We handle that consolidation during onboarding.

No. You do not need to already be a client of a particular bank to open a PERA. The administrator and the accredited custodian handle the account setup, and funding is done through transfers such as InstaPay or PESONet.

No, it does not get paid to the BSP. Contributions flow into your own PERA account through the administrator and accredited custodian bank, funded via electronic transfer. The BSP is the regulator of the system, not the collector of the contributions.

Yes. A common setup is salary deduction for the employee's share, with the employer remitting both sides together. Opening the accounts is the first step of the program, handled by the administrator as part of onboarding, so the employer is not left to do it alone.

Yes. PERA runs alongside existing payroll as a deduction line, and the administrator posts and records the contributions, which then appear in the ezPERA app. There is no need to replace your payroll system to participate.