Who's Banking the Diaspora
Bank Jerusalem, Mizrahi-Tefahot, Bank Leumi, Bank Hapoalim. Plus UBS Israel, Julius Baer, Psagot, Meitav. The institutions repositioning around a multi-year, identity-driven capital flow.
Bank Jerusalem, Mizrahi-Tefahot, Bank Leumi, Bank Hapoalim. Plus UBS Israel, Julius Baer, Psagot, Meitav. The institutions repositioning around a multi-year, identity-driven capital flow that began with October 7 and is still building.
Capital flows leave fingerprints on bank balance sheets. The post-October 7 diaspora flow — driven by identity, security, and the documented antisemitism baseline across Western Jewish communities — has produced a clear set of institutional winners.
Bank Jerusalem is the cleanest case. Internal data shows the value of mortgages taken by foreign buyers at the bank more than doubled between 2020 and 2024. The bank's foreign-residents desk has expanded staffing, English- and French-language servicing, and partnerships with US- and France-based mortgage brokers feeding it qualified buyers. The pattern repeats across the Israeli mortgage sector at scale: total Israeli mortgage volume reached 94 billion shekels in 2024 and is projected to exceed 100 billion in 2025. November 2024 alone saw 7,150 apartment transactions — a 73% jump from October 2023.
The Big Four Mortgage Banks
Mizrahi-Tefahot Bank — Israel's largest mortgage lender by volume — has named foreign-buyer demand a key driver of 2025 momentum. The bank's mortgage division is expanding cross-border products, including dollar- and euro-denominated mortgage instruments and 20/80 payment structures designed for US and French buyers acquiring property ahead of physical aliyah.
Bank Hapoalim and Bank Leumi, Israel's two largest banks, have both built or expanded dedicated English-, French-, and Spanish-language private banking desks. Both have run global roadshows in 2024-2025 across New York, Paris, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and Johannesburg — specifically to onboard diaspora deposit relationships. Bank Leumi's Olim Center and Hapoalim's equivalent are now full-service operations handling mortgage, deposit, FX conversion, tax structuring, and real estate referrals through a single client manager.
Bank Jerusalem remains the specialist. Smaller in total assets but disproportionately focused on the foreign-buyer mortgage segment, it has become the default counterparty for the religious Anglo and French Jewish flows. Several major community-coordinated aliyah groups now route their entire mortgage book through Bank Jerusalem because of accumulated expertise on cross-border underwriting and olim tax planning.
Private Wealth: UBS, Julius Baer, Psagot, Meitav
Foreign private banks operating in Israel have repositioned substantially. UBS Israel and Julius Baer have both expanded their Tel Aviv private banking teams to handle olim and pre-aliyah diaspora families consolidating assets in Israeli jurisdiction. Both firms target the high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth end of the flow — the families with $25 million-plus in liquid assets who require multi-currency portfolio management integrated with the olim ten-year framework.
Local Israeli wealth managers — Psagot, Meitav, Halman-Aldubi, Excellence — have absorbed the broader affluent diaspora segment. The standard product set now includes multi-currency portfolio management, integrated olim tax planning, and pre-aliyah onboarding workflows that allow families to begin investing in Israel through Israeli structures while still resident abroad. The mid-market diaspora family — net worth $5 million to $100 million — is now considered a primary growth segment by Israeli wealth firms.
Tel Aviv-based family offices and multi-family offices are similarly expanding. The post-October 7 reassessment has produced a generation of diaspora families re-anchoring their wealth planning in Israeli jurisdiction — not necessarily moving the money out of New York or London but adding an Israeli wing to the structure that lets the family operate with optionality on physical residence.
Brokerages and Law Firms
Israeli real estate brokerages have built English- and French-language infrastructure around foreign buyers. Anglo-Saxon Real Estate remains the largest English-focused firm. RE/MAX Israel, Israel Investment Realty, and Capitis Real Estate all report record foreign-client years for 2024-2025. The brokers' income from cross-border transactions is now a meaningful component of overall Israeli residential brokerage revenue — a structural shift from the largely domestic pre-2023 market.
Law firms specializing in olim tax status and cross-border structuring are running waitlists. The standard practice serves clients an average of 18 to 24 months before physical aliyah — advising on entity restructuring, retirement-account treatment, trust planning, and the timing of the "year of adjustment" election under the Israeli tax code. The most active firms include Herzog Fox & Neeman, Meitar, FBC & Co., and Erdinast, Ben Nathan, Toledano — each of which operates substantial olim tax practices alongside their corporate work.
What's Being Built
The 2024-2025 product innovation cycle has produced several specific instruments worth tracking.
Dual-currency mortgages — dollar- or euro-denominated products that hedge against shekel volatility for foreign-buyer borrowers. Several banks have launched these in 2024 and 2025 to address the structural risk that arises when buyers hold US/EU income but acquire shekel-denominated property.
20/80 payment plans — 20% at signing, 80% at delivery, allowing buyers to lock in property without front-loading the full purchase capital. Especially common in new-build towers targeted at French and American buyers. Effectively a developer-financed instrument that lets a buyer commit two years before completion.
Pre-aliyah deposit programs — Israeli banks accepting deposits and opening accounts for buyers who have not yet made aliyah, in anticipation of the move. This is where Bank Jerusalem and Mizrahi-Tefahot are most aggressive. The mechanism allows a US or French family to begin operating Israeli accounts — paying contractors, transferring equity, planning property management — 12 to 36 months before physical relocation.
Olim concierge banking — bundled services that integrate mortgage, deposit, currency conversion, tax structuring, and real estate referrals. Bank Leumi's Olim Center and Hapoalim's equivalent are now full-service operations. Both serve as primary onboarding routes for newly arrived olim with significant wealth.
What It Means
Diaspora banking is no longer a side business at Israeli financial institutions. It is a category. The infrastructure, the staffing, the product innovation, and the marketing spend are all sized for a multi-year flow tied to a structural reassessment of Jewish life in the West — a reassessment whose underlying drivers (security, identity, antisemitism) appear durable rather than temporary.
For firms positioned upstream — mortgage brokers, foreign-exchange platforms, tax advisors, real estate marketers, professional service firms targeting olim — the addressable opportunity is the next 50,000 olim and the estimated 200,000 diaspora families managing Israeli property without yet moving. The banks have already chosen. The question for everyone else is who they work with.
Part of the Olam Diaspora Economy cluster. Hub: Aliyah 2026: The Dollar Figure. Related: The Olim Tax Break · The French Aliyah Bet · The American Aliyah Bet.
