After some 30 years of debate on how to provide financial security for the ageing Hong Kong population, the British Hong Kong Government legislated on a mandatory, privately managed fully funded contribution scheme in 1995 along the lines of the second pillar defined in the World Bank report. Legislators representing the business sector refused to back the MPF legislation unless an offset mechanism was included to allow employers to use amounts paid by them to make long-service payments or severance to staff. Under the legislation, occupational schemes are unlike publicly run national provident funds found in other countries, and those schemes marketed to the public as mandatory provident fund (MPF) are established and run by financial institutions.