The HRD Corp benefit most Malaysian employers never use: Funding your LMS with the CBT Scheme

Picture an HR lead at a mid-sized Malaysian company. Let’s call her Farah. Every year she does the responsible thing with the company’s HRD Corp levy: She sends staff on external courses, keeps the paperwork tidy, and claims the fees back. It works, and she assumes that’s what the levy is for.

Meanwhile, the company is trying to run its own training in-house. Onboarding for new hires. Annual compliance refreshers. Product training for the sales team. Farah has been piecing that together on whatever tools were lying around, or quietly paying for a platform out of the department’s own budget, because internal training feels like a cost the company simply has to absorb.

Here’s what most employers don’t realize. For a significant portion of that internal training setup, the platform itself could be paid for from the same levy the company already contributes to. Farah is leaving part of her levy unused, and most employers are doing exactly the same.

What CBT actually is

HRD Corp runs a scheme called Computer-Based Training, or CBT. Most employers never touch it, because they think of the levy as money for sending people to courses. CBT is different. It exists so employers can fund the software and systems they use to train their own workforce in-house, especially when releasing staff for external training is not practical.

In plain terms, CBT lets you use your levy to build the system that delivers learning, not just pay for individual course seats. That distinction is the whole point. Most companies use their levy to buy training. CBT lets you build the system that delivers it. One disappears after the course ends. The other keeps training every employee who joins after that. That’s a bigger idea than saving money on a subscription, and it’s the one worth holding onto as you read the rest of this.

What you can actually claim

Under the current rules set out in HRD Corp’s Employer’s Circular 3/2024, the claimable items include:

• The purchase or development of training software and a learning management system (LMS).
• The subscription to an LMS, where it’s used for training only and not bundled with other HR functions.
• The subscription to e-learning content platforms used to upskill your staff.
  
  Financial assistance can be up to 100% of the cost, subject to your available grant balance. That condition matters, and it’s HRD Corp’s own wording rather than fine print. What you can claim depends on the levy balance you’ve built up.

The two things that make CBT worth the paperwork

There are two features that set the CBT scheme apart from the usual course-claim route. Both are genuinely useful for a company that runs internal training.

First, you fund infrastructure, not seats. Think about onboarding. Without a system of your own, every new hire sits through another live induction. Someone books the room. Someone repeats the same presentation. Someone answers the same questions for the hundredth time. With an LMS funded through CBT, onboarding becomes something the company builds once and reuses every time someone joins. You build it once and run it for ten employees or a thousand. Training stops being a recurring per-person expense and becomes something your company owns.

Second, once your grant is approved and you’ve paid, you can claim without waiting for the training to finish. On the normal course route, you claim only after the training is completed. Under CBT, you can submit your claim as soon as you have the payment receipt for the LMS or e-learning subscription. You’re not waiting months for staff to work through the material before you recover the funds. For a finance team in any organization, that’s a meaningful cash flow advantage.

The rules that decide whether you qualify

CBT is generous, but it has firm conditions, and getting them wrong means a rejected claim. There are three that matter most.

Apply before you buy. You must submit the grant application through eTRiS at least one month before you purchase or develop the software. You cannot buy a platform today and claim for it afterwards. Approval comes first, always.

It must be solely for training. The software has to be dedicated to training and learning. This is the condition that often trips employers up. If your platform is really a broader HR system that also handles payroll, leave, attendance, or performance reviews, the subscription won’t be claimable. HRD Corp is explicit that the LMS must exclude other HR functions. A dedicated training platform qualifies. An all-in-one HR suite with a training tab does not.

Keep it to the learning ecosystem. The scheme covers the training software and content, not the general hardware around it. Staff laptops, office workstations, and everyday operational software aren’t claimable under CBT.

Where a dedicated training platform fits

This is why the “solely for training” line in the HRD Corp document matters so much in practice. A platform built specifically for training, like TrainerCentral, sits cleanly on the claimable side of that boundary. It’s purely a training system and not an HR suite. It doesn’t run into the multi-purpose exclusion that disqualifies HRIS or HRMS software. You can use it to host onboarding, compliance, and internal courses, deliver them live or self-paced, run assessments, issue certificates, and more. The subscription for such a tool is the kind of cost CBT is designed to cover.

One point to keep in mind: Because your company is both the buyer and the one making the claim, this is one of the few situations where the platform cost itself is genuinely claimable. That’s the specific thing that CBT unlocks, and it’s worth understanding properly rather than assuming your levy only ever pays for external courses.

Before you act on this

The CBT scheme is worth taking advantage of, but it’s important to confirm the current specifics with HRD Corp before you commit. Check the exact eligibility wording, the current application timelines, and your own grant balance in eTRiS, and treat HRD Corp’s Employer’s Circular 3/2024 and the eTRiS portal as the authority. This article explains how the scheme works. It doesn’t replace HRD Corp’s approval of your specific application.

The opportunity is bigger than the claim

Most employers think of the HRD Corp levy as a way to offset the cost of training. CBT makes something more interesting possible. Instead of paying for training every time someone new joins, you build a learning system your company owns. Every onboarding program, compliance course, product module, and internal certification becomes something you can reuse, improve, and deliver consistently to the tenth and the thousandth employee alike. 

The levy helps fund the platform. What you build on that platform becomes part of your organization long after the claim has been approved. That’s the shift worth making. Not using your levy to buy training one course at a time, but using it to build the system that delivers training for as long as your company keeps hiring or has any other internal training needs.

Common questions

Can I really pay for an LMS subscription with my HRD Corp levy?

Yes, under the CBT scheme, provided the platform is used solely for training and not bundled with other HR functions. Financial assistance is up to 100%, subject to your available grant balance. How a recurring subscription is treated on renewal is worth confirming with HRD Corp for your specific term.

Do I have to wait for staff to finish the training before I claim?

No. Under CBT, you can submit your claim as soon as you have the payment receipt for the subscription, regardless of when the training is to be completed.

When do I need to apply?

Before you buy. The grant application goes through eTRiS at least one month before you purchase or develop the software. Claims cannot be made retrospectively.

What is not claimable?

You can’t make a claim for multi-purpose HR software that also handles payroll, leave, or performance; general hardware like laptops and workstations; and everyday operational software. The scheme is for dedicated training software and content.