How to claim HRD Corp for leadership training: the SBL-Khas guide HR actually needs

To claim HRD Corp for leadership training, your company applies for a grant on the eTRiS portal under the SBL-Khas scheme before the training date, using the quotation and course details supplied by an HRD Corp-registered provider; once the grant is approved and the training delivered, HRD Corp pays the provider directly from your levy account and your company pays nothing upfront. That is the whole process in one sentence. The rest of this guide is the detail that makes it go smoothly — including the two mistakes that cause most rejected or under-paid claims.

This guide is written for HR and L&D managers in Malaysia and for SME owners who handle it themselves. It reflects how the process works in 2026 and how we prepare claim packs for our own programmes; HRD Corp's rules do change, so treat eTRiS and HRD Corp's official guidance as the final word.

Who can claim, and for what

Any employer registered with HRD Corp that pays the levy and has a positive levy balance can claim, for training attended by its Malaysian employees. Registration is mandatory for Malaysian companies in covered sectors with ten or more Malaysian employees, who contribute 1% of monthly wages; companies with five to nine employees may register voluntarily at 0.5%. If your company has been deducting the levy, you are almost certainly eligible — the more useful question is how much is sitting in your account. Your finance team or eTRiS will show the balance.

The training itself must be delivered by an HRD Corp-registered training provider and be a programme that HRD Corp has registered, which means it carries a programme number (often shown as a "TP No." on providers' pages). Leadership, communication and soft-skills programmes are all claimable; what matters is the provider's registration, not the topic.

SBL-Khas in plain English

SBL-Khas is the scheme under which HRD Corp pays the training provider directly from your levy, so your company never issues payment for the course fee. This is different from the older reimbursement model, where the company paid first and claimed back later. For HR, SBL-Khas means one thing: a leadership programme can go ahead without a purchase order competing with every other line in the budget. For finance, it means no cash out. For the provider, it means they carry the payment risk until HRD Corp settles — which is why good providers are meticulous about the paperwork.

The five steps, in order

1. Get the claim pack from the provider. You need a formal quotation in your company's name, the course outline and agenda, the trainers' CVs, the provider's HRD Corp accreditation certificate, and the programme number. A well-run provider sends all of this in one pack with a short start-here guide. If you have to chase each document separately, that tells you something about how the claim will go.
2. Apply on eTRiS 3–4 weeks before Day 1. Log in to eTRiS, create a new grant application, select SBL-Khas, enter the programme number, upload the documents, and list the participants. Approval usually takes about a week, but it must be approved before the training starts — training that begins before approval cannot be claimed, and there is no retrospective fix.
3. Check the fee before you submit. eTRiS asks for the course fee per day per participant and multiplies it by the number of training days. If you enter the full two-day fee in that field, the declared amount doubles. Enter the fee divided by the number of days, confirm the total on the summary screen matches the quotation exactly, and only then submit. An application cannot be edited after submission — the only remedy is to cancel and re-apply, which costs you a week.
4. Attend, sign in, keep the evidence. On the day, participants sign the attendance record (usually both morning and afternoon on each day). Attendance is what HRD Corp pays against — a participant who registers but does not attend is not claimable, and partial attendance can be queried.
5. The provider submits the claim. After the training, the provider submits the claim on eTRiS with the invoice, attendance records and any required evaluation. HRD Corp verifies and pays the provider from your levy account. Your job at this stage is simply to approve the claim promptly when eTRiS prompts you — delays here hold up the provider's payment, not yours, but they are remembered.

A realistic timeline

The mistakes that cost companies their grant

• Applying too late. The single most common failure. If the training starts before the grant is approved, the levy cannot be used. Four weeks is comfortable; two is a gamble; one is usually too late.
• The fee-per-day trap. Described above. It does not reject the application — it silently doubles the amount, which HRD Corp may then query or cap, and it cannot be corrected without cancelling.
• Mismatched details. The quotation, the eTRiS application and the invoice must agree on company name, programme title, dates, venue, fee and participant count. A date that moved after the application was approved needs an amendment, not a hope.
• Missing attendance. A participant who did not sign in, or a sign-in sheet that was never collected, is money left on the table.
• Leaving the levy unused. Not a grant error, but the most expensive mistake of all. Levy balances that sit idle can be subject to forfeiture under HRD Corp's rules, and even where they are not, they represent training your leaders never received. Check your balance now and plan Q3 and Q4 programmes while there is still time to get them approved this year.

Using the levy well: a note on what to buy

Because SBL-Khas removes the cash-flow objection, the real decision becomes what leadership development is actually worth funding. In our experience, the levy delivers the least when it is spread thinly across generic half-day courses to "use it up", and the most when it is concentrated on the leadership team — the small group whose self-awareness and behaviour shape everyone else's. A two-day intensive for eight senior leaders changes a company; eight unrelated lunch-and-learns do not.

That is why FutureX builds its claimable programmes around self-awareness first — the Business Enneagram as the diagnostic, executive presence and communication as the visible skill, and leading in the AI workplace as the context. Most leadership programmes change behaviour. We would rather your levy changed the leader.

What FutureX gives you

All three FutureX Leader programmes are HRD Corp registered and claimable under SBL-Khas, as public cohorts in Kuala Lumpur or delivered in-house for your own leadership team, in English or Mandarin:

• Business Enneagram Leadership — 2-day intensive · Programme No. 10001712614
• Speaking with Impact — 2-day executive presence workshop · Programme No. 10001699983
• Next-Gen Leadership for the AI Workplace — 1-day workshop · Programme No. 10001662907

For every registration we send a complete claim pack — start-here guide, quotation, course outline, agenda, two trainer CVs, accreditation certificates — and we handle the claim after the training. Your company pays nothing upfront. The current dates and rates are on the HRD Corp claimable leadership training page, or email simyee@futurexleader.com to scope an in-house cohort.