Supervisor of Banks Yair Avidan: “The launch of the digital bank pilot stage a few days ago is a further significant step toward establishing a new bank in Israel.  It is a further element that is part of the measures being promoted by the Bank of Israel to increase competition in the financial system.  We have guided the bank through its establishment, we will continue to do so, and we will help any other initiative that wishes to establish a bank in Israel.”

 

The Bank of Israel has, in recent years, worked to advance competition in the financial system, partly by removing entry barriers for new banks, a process that is intended to increase and diversify the number of competitors in the market and the competitive threat to existing participants.

 

In addition, the Banking Supervision Department wants to leverage the far-reaching technological developments and changes in consumer behavior of recent years to establish new digital banks with a narrow expense structure that will contribute to increased competition, and has initiated a series of leniencies in the supervision directives to enable full digital banking activity without needing to go to a bank branch.

 

The Banking Supervision Department was aware of the difficulty inherent in establishing a new bank.  To encourage the establishment of new banks, it decided to standardize, shorten, and simplify the process, remove entry barriers to the banking system, and create regulatory certainty at an early stage of the process for any entrepreneur interested in establishing a bank.

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