Mad Hon · Pension savings

Check your pension balance once a year

Check your pension balance once a year. A step-by-step Mad Hon guide for your Pension savings score, written for olim.

1. Pull the report from Har HaKesef, which is the savings register.
Har HaKesef, the money mountain, is a free Ministry of Finance service that lists the pension funds, provident funds, keren hishtalmut accounts, managers-insurance policies and life policies with a savings component registered in your name, along with dormant bank accounts and deposits. It is not the same thing as Har HaBituach, the insurance mountain, which is the Capital Market Authority register of insurance policies. For anything about accumulated savings you want the first one. Access runs through the national digital identity service, and if you have never registered for government digital services, that registration is the slow part rather than the report.
2. Treat a thin report as information, not as a verdict.
If the report comes back with one small account, or with nothing, that is what the rules produce rather than what you did wrong. An employee with no earlier Israeli pension only starts accruing after six months in a job, and a few years in the country is a few years of deposits. At that stage the report is doing a different job for you than it does for someone with a thirty-year balance: it is confirming that an account exists, that it is the one you think it is, and that money is arriving in it.
3. Read the annual statement the fund sends, and look at four lines.
Every managing company sends an annual report, usually early in the year. Four things on it are worth the ten minutes: the opening and closing balance, the deposits that actually arrived, the return the investment track achieved, and the management fee, which is charged in two separate places, as a percentage of the accumulated balance each year and as a percentage of every deposit going in. The statement also shows the benchmark return for your track alongside the fund. Compare them over three to five years rather than over one, because one year tells you about the market and several tell you about the fund.
4. Line the deposits up against your payslips.
This is the check almost nobody does and the one that finds real money. A deduction printed on a payslip is a statement of intent; a deposit recorded by the fund is the money. Take three or four months, put the payslip figure next to the fund record for the same month, and confirm they match. A gap between the two is a different and more serious problem from a low balance, and raising it needs the months and the amounts written down before you send the first email.
5. Know which of the three levers explains a disappointing number.
A balance moves for three reasons: how much goes in, what the track returns, and what the fee takes out. Contributions and fees are yours to set; returns are not, and a single weak year is not evidence about a fund. Work out which of the three explains what you are looking at before acting on it, because raising a contribution rate, negotiating a fee and changing a track are three different pieces of work with three different payoffs.
6. Save the report and set a reminder, and repeat after any job change.
Keep it as a dated PDF so next year has something to compare against, and put a calendar reminder in for twelve months. Then add one trigger: do it again whenever you change employer. A new employer will normally open a new account unless you hand them the details of the one you already have, which is exactly how an oleh ends up paying fees on three funds inside five years.

Check your pension balance once a year. A step-by-step Mad Hon guide for your Pension savings score, written for olim.

1. Pull the report from Har HaKesef, which is the savings register.

Har HaKesef, the money mountain, is a free Ministry of Finance service that lists the pension funds, provident funds, keren hishtalmut accounts, managers-insurance policies and life policies with a savings component registered in your name, along with dormant bank accounts and deposits. It is not the same thing as Har HaBituach, the insurance mountain, which is the Capital Market Authority register of insurance policies. For anything about accumulated savings you want the first one. Access runs through the national digital identity service, and if you have never registered for government digital services, that registration is the slow part rather than the report.

2. Treat a thin report as information, not as a verdict.

If the report comes back with one small account, or with nothing, that is what the rules produce rather than what you did wrong. An employee with no earlier Israeli pension only starts accruing after six months in a job, and a few years in the country is a few years of deposits. At that stage the report is doing a different job for you than it does for someone with a thirty-year balance: it is confirming that an account exists, that it is the one you think it is, and that money is arriving in it.

3. Read the annual statement the fund sends, and look at four lines.

Every managing company sends an annual report, usually early in the year. Four things on it are worth the ten minutes: the opening and closing balance, the deposits that actually arrived, the return the investment track achieved, and the management fee, which is charged in two separate places, as a percentage of the accumulated balance each year and as a percentage of every deposit going in. The statement also shows the benchmark return for your track alongside the fund. Compare them over three to five years rather than over one, because one year tells you about the market and several tell you about the fund.

4. Line the deposits up against your payslips.

This is the check almost nobody does and the one that finds real money. A deduction printed on a payslip is a statement of intent; a deposit recorded by the fund is the money. Take three or four months, put the payslip figure next to the fund record for the same month, and confirm they match. A gap between the two is a different and more serious problem from a low balance, and raising it needs the months and the amounts written down before you send the first email.

5. Know which of the three levers explains a disappointing number.

A balance moves for three reasons: how much goes in, what the track returns, and what the fee takes out. Contributions and fees are yours to set; returns are not, and a single weak year is not evidence about a fund. Work out which of the three explains what you are looking at before acting on it, because raising a contribution rate, negotiating a fee and changing a track are three different pieces of work with three different payoffs.

6. Save the report and set a reminder, and repeat after any job change.

Keep it as a dated PDF so next year has something to compare against, and put a calendar reminder in for twelve months. Then add one trigger: do it again whenever you change employer. A new employer will normally open a new account unless you hand them the details of the one you already have, which is exactly how an oleh ends up paying fees on three funds inside five years.