Guide
HRDF claimable courses Malaysia — what it means, and how not to lose the levy
Unused levy is forfeited after two years, down to a RM10,000 floor. Most employers do not know the clock is running.
Updated 10 September 2026
HRDF claimable courses — HRDF claimable courses, since the fund was renamed — are ones where both the provider and the specific course are registered, and the employer applies for the grant before the training runs. This page explains the mechanics end to end. If your company employs ten or more Malaysian employees, you almost certainly pay the HRD Corp levy every month, and there is almost certainly a balance sitting in that account right now. Most employers know this much and stop there.
What far fewer know is that the balance is not yours indefinitely. Unused levy is forfeited after two years, and the forfeiture takes everything above RM10,000. This guide sets out the rates, the forfeiture rule, and the order operations have to happen in — because the single most common and most expensive mistake is doing them in the wrong order.
Everything below is sourced from HRD Corp’s own published material, read on 10 September 2026, and linked where it matters. Confirm your own position with HRD Corp — this is a guide, not advice about your specific account.
Who pays, and how much
The levy is set under the Pembangunan Sumber Manusia Berhad Act 2001. Registration is compulsory for employers with ten or more Malaysian employees, and those employers pay a levy of 1% of the monthly wages of their employees.
Employers with five to nine Malaysian employees are given the option to register. If they choose to, the rate is 0.5% of monthly wages.
The practical implication for training budgets is that a company of any size is already contributing something, and for a mid-sized employer the accumulated balance is frequently larger than the training they were planning to buy.
| Malaysian employees | Registration | Levy rate |
|---|---|---|
| 10 or more | Compulsory | 1% of monthly wages |
| 5 to 9 | Optional | 0.5% of monthly wages if registered |
| Fewer than 5 | Not applicable | — |
The forfeiture rule almost nobody plans around
The period for which unutilised levy can be held was revised from five years to two years with effect from 1 January 2020. If no claims are made within two years — twenty-four months — the levy balance above RM10,000 is forfeited, and RM10,000 remains in the account.
Balances under RM10,000 are exempt from forfeiture. So the exposure is precisely the amount by which your balance exceeds RM10,000, and for a company of a few hundred staff that can be a substantial number.
The clock is not the calendar year. For an employer that has claimed before, the two years run from the date of the last successful training claim. For an employer that has never claimed, it runs from when the levy balance first reached RM10,000.
The order of operations — get this wrong and you cannot claim
This is where money is actually lost, and it is lost by employers who did everything else right.
The grant application goes in BEFORE the training takes place. It is approved against a specific course, a specific registered provider, specific dates and a specific participant list. Training that has already happened cannot be retro-fitted into an approved grant.
The provider and the course both have to be registered with HRD Corp. A provider being registered is not sufficient — the specific course also has to be, and a provider should be able to tell you its status immediately.
After the training, the claim is submitted with the required evidence: attendance, invoice, and whatever else the scheme requires for that grant type.
| # | Step | When |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Confirm the provider and the specific course are HRD Corp registered | Before quoting |
| 2 | Agree course, dates and participant list | Before applying |
| 3 | Submit the grant application | BEFORE the training — this is the one that catches people |
| 4 | Receive approval | Before the training runs |
| 5 | Deliver the training | — |
| 6 | Submit the claim with attendance and invoice | After delivery |
Where to find the list of claimable courses
There is no single downloadable PDF of every claimable course in Malaysia, which is why people keep searching for one. What exists is the HRD Corp system itself: registered training providers list their registered courses there, and the employer searches it from inside their own employer account.
That matters because a course is not claimable in the abstract. Claimability is a property of a specific course run by a specific registered provider — the same topic from an unregistered provider is not claimable, and a provider being registered does not automatically make every course they sell registered.
So the practical question is never "is project management training claimable". It is "is this course, from this provider, on these dates, registered and approved for my grant application". Ask any provider for their HRD Corp registration and the course reference; a registered one produces both immediately.
What about the free courses?
HRD Corp runs e-LATiH, a free online learning platform, and it ranks high for general training searches. A lot of people arrive at training questions looking for exactly that, and it is worth being clear about when free is the right answer.
If one person wants to learn project management concepts at their own pace, e-LATiH or any of the free online libraries will do the job and cost nothing. Use them. Spending a levy balance on something an individual could self-serve is poor use of the fund.
Free breaks down at the point where the problem is organisational rather than informational. A self-paced video cannot run a working session on your live project with your actual stakeholders in the room, cannot get eleven people to agree one way of estimating, and cannot be scheduled as a shared experience the team refers back to. That is the whole difference, and it is not about content quality.
The other practical limit: e-LATiH completion does not consume your levy, so it does nothing about a balance heading for forfeiture. If your reason for acting is the two-year clock, free training does not reset it — only a successful claim does.
Why September is the busiest month in Malaysian training
Search demand for HRD Corp funding terms peaks in September, and it peaks hard — searches for "hrdf claimable training provider" run around six and a half times their annual average in that month, and general training terms run three to four times higher.
That is levy-burn behaviour: companies working out in the last quarter that a balance is going unused, and moving to spend it. It is not a coincidence and it repeats.
The practical consequence is that trainer availability in the fourth quarter is the tightest it gets all year. If you are planning to use a balance before a deadline, the constraint you will hit is not budget approval — it is finding a trainer with the dates free.
A caution about free alternatives
HRD Corp operates e-LATiH, a free online learning platform, and it ranks prominently for general training searches. For individual self-directed upskilling it is a genuinely useful resource and we would not discourage anyone from using it.
It is a different thing from facilitated in-house training for a team, and the difference is not quality — it is that a self-paced online course cannot run a working session on your live project with your actual stakeholders in the room. If what you need is the former, use it and keep your levy for something else.
Questions
›How do I claim HRDF claimable training?
In outline: confirm the provider and the specific course are registered, agree dates and a participant list, submit the grant application through your employer account BEFORE the training runs, get approval, deliver the training, then submit the claim with attendance and invoice.
The step that catches people is the order. The application is approved in advance against a specific course, provider, date and participant list — training that has already happened cannot be added to a grant afterwards.
›What courses can claim HRDF?
Any course that is registered with HRD Corp and run by a registered training provider, where the employer applies for the grant before delivery. The topic matters far less than the registration.
That includes far more than technical skills — project management, leadership, communication, compliance and software training are all commonly claimed. If a provider cannot give you a registration number and a course reference, the topic is irrelevant.
›Where is the HRDF claimable course list for 2026?
There is no public master PDF, which is why the search keeps coming back empty. Registered courses live inside the HRD Corp system and are searched from your employer account.
Any list circulating as a downloadable file is a provider’s own catalogue rather than an official register, and it will be out of date. Treat the provider’s registration number as the thing to verify, not the list.
›Is there free HRD Corp training?
Yes — e-LATiH is HRD Corp’s free online platform, and for self-paced individual learning it is genuinely useful.
It does not consume your levy, though, so it does nothing about a balance approaching the two-year forfeiture point. And it cannot do what facilitated in-house training does: get a whole team to agree one way of working, using your own live projects.
›How much does HRDF claimable training cost?
The same as the training itself — the scheme changes who ultimately pays, not the price. In-house project management training in Malaysia runs RM5,000 to RM8,000 per training day regardless of how it is funded.
What the scheme changes is whether that comes out of your operating budget or out of a levy balance you are already contributing to every month.
›How do I find out my levy balance?
Through your employer account on HRD Corp’s system. Whoever handles payroll or HR in your organisation will normally have access.
If you are trying to build a case internally for training, the balance and the date of the last successful claim are the two numbers that will make the argument for you.
›Does a small claim really reset the two-year clock?
HRD Corp’s published rule ties the two-year window to the date of the last successful training claim, and does not condition that on the claim’s size.
We would still confirm your specific position with HRD Corp rather than relying on a general guide, particularly if a large balance is at stake.
›Can we claim for training that has already happened?
No. The grant application is approved in advance against specific course, provider, dates and participants.
This is the most common and most expensive mistake in the whole process, and it is not recoverable after the fact.
›Is your training HRDF claimable?
In-house training of this kind is normally claimable where the provider and course are registered and the employer applies before delivery.
We confirm current registration status for your specific dates during scoping, before you commit to anything. We would rather establish that up front than have you discover it at claim stage.
Get a quote
Tell us your team size, timeframe and whether you pay the HRD Corp levy. Within one working day you get a day rate, a suggested course shape and how to claim it through HRD Corp.