Bank Hapoalim B.M.

Bank Hapoalim, founded in 1921, is Israel’s most significant and leading financial institution. During its 100 years, the Bank has developed a network of branches to manage its clientele relationships, providing service and advice vis-à-vis complex transactions and at decision levels. In addition, the Bank has developed advanced digital capabilities and provides customers with tailored, accessible, and intuitive banking services. Besides its operations in Israel, the Bank operates abroad through branches, representative offices, subsidiaries, and a correspondent relationship with banks around the world. The Bank Hapoalim Group is one of the largest employers in Israel, with about 8,800 employees.

The Bank’s strengths and leadership are reflected in its financial statements. In March 2021, the Bank published its 2020 results, and reported the net profit in 2020 was NIS 2,056 million, compared with NIS 1,799 million in 2019. The rate of net return on shareholders’ equity was 5.3% in 2020. The adjusted ** net profit in 2020 amounted to NIS 2,205 million compared with NIS 2,278 million in 2019. The rate of net return on shareholders’ equity excluding these effects was 5.7%.

Shareholders’ equity of the Bank totaled NIS 39.9 billion at the end of 2020, compared with NIS 38.2 billion at the end of 2019.

Bank Hapoalim and the Leading International Rating Agencies

Moody’s at (A); Standard & Poor’s at (A2), and by Fitch Ratings. In Israel, the Bank is rated by Standard & Poor’s Ma’alot at (AAA), and by Midroog (a subsidiary of Moody’s) at (Aaa).

The Bank Group is active in Israel in various areas of banking and interfaces with the capital markets, through three central divisions - the Corporate Division, the Retail Division and the Financial Markets and International Banking Division.

The Corporate Division serves most of the Bank’s business customers. In the large corporate segment, the Division operates through sectors with broad industry expertise. In the mid-market segment, the Division operates through business centers, located throughout the country, and through the Bank’s branches that provide operational services to its customers.

The Retail Division serves households, private banking, small businesses and non-residents, through a network of more than 180 branches, Poalim INVEST - 5 investment advice centers, and 2 mobile branches that provide service to dozens of service points (about 60% of which are at senior citizen residences/assisted living and senior citizen centers), (as of April 2021), alongside many direct channels, such as self-service devices at certain branches, “Poalim on the Internet,” “Poalim by Cell Phone,” and the “Poalim by Telephone” call center, the Connect center for digitally-oriented customers, interactive voice response systems for information and transactions and through social media apps. In addition, the Bank bolstered its system for booking meetings with its bankers, and added addition meeting coordination channels, allowing the customer to book a meeting with a banker in an efficient, qualitative and professional manner.

As part of the Bank’s concept of service and social responsibility, it considers accessibility by people with disabilities as a significant and business-required issue. Under this service concept, all Bank services are extended to people with disabilities and accessibility is taken into consideration when developing new products and processes.

The Financial Markets and International Banking Division coordinates the Bank Group’s operations in most areas of the capital markets, in Israel and abroad, including brokerage services, securities custodianship, currency and derivatives trading services, research and advice, services to financial asset managers, portfolio management, investment banking, underwriting and security issuance management.

Besides banking, the Bank Group is involved in interfacing operations, mainly in the capital markets, which is reflected, inter alia, in providing brokerage services for trading in securities, securities custodianship, trading in currencies and derivatives, research and advice, services for financial asset managers, investment portfolio management, investment banking, underwriting, and security issuance management.

Foreign Operations

Besides its operations in Israel, the Bank Group operates abroad in the business sector, in Israel, Europe, and the United States. The foreign operations include approving credits to local and international borrowers, inter alia, by providing credit for business operations of the Bank’s customers. 

Commitment to Personal, Human and Technological Services

The Bank serves the most significant number of customers in the Israeli banking system, with over 2 million customers. The broad range of Bank customers requires change and a diversification of the range of products and services offered by the Bank to the public. Thus, is considered a growth engine for the Bank’s commitment to personal, human, and technological service.

Leading Banking Innovation

The Bank considers technological development as an opportunity to launch advanced financial products and services for its customers, and thus encourages innovation in the Israeli economy in general and in the banking system in particular. The Bank’s innovation efforts are led by a dedicated division - the Innovation and Strategy Division, which aims to initiate, create and leverage innovative solutions and new, digital and technological growth engines, which will be a leap forward in offering digital value to the customer. The Division developed “Bit” – a groundbreaking payment app which has already recorded some 5 million downloads. “Bit” which was developed to provide a technology solution for monetary transfers between people in a relaxed, convenient and secure way, has evolved and now leads the payments revolution in a variety of sectors, including insurance and pensions, retail and transportation.

Business Strategy

Bank Hapoalim will work to generate significant growth in its scales of operations with the customers of the retail, commercial and business banking divisions. This growth would be based on three main channels:

• Growth in banking activity: over the past year, retail customers transferred their activity from the branches to the direct channels at an accelerated rate. In accord with this trend, the bank would develop advanced tools for identifying the customers’ needs in the digital space and stepping up the ability to purchase more complex products through digital channels. In addition, the bank would improve its service level though strengthening the service-orientation, improving the banker’s availability, expanding the digital offering of products and transactions, expanding the authorizations of the bankers in the call centers and expanding the variety of communication channels between the bank and its customers.

In the commercial and business customers front, the bank would continue to reinforce its leading position in order to remain the first choice of business customers.

• Developing the new banking: Alongside improving the competitiveness of the renewing traditional banking, the bank would develop new distribution channels for bank services and products, with an emphasis on new digital channels that rely on advanced data analysis capabilities and excellent customer experience. In February 2021, the bank launched a digital wallet service in the framework of the Bit app. Bit Wallet serves as a contactless EMV technological platform for the users of Bit, enabling debit transactions in businesses through touching the PoS with their smartphones. The Bit app, where millions of customers of all of the banks are currently active, would serve as a significant platform of the bank for expanding its activity with new users in the digital arena. 

• Building a growth-supporting organizational infrastructure: In order to implement the business plan for growth in the existing operations and developing new banking, the bank would execute a quantum leap in several aspects of its organizational and technological capabilities. The bank would work to drive processes that would encourage an organizational culture that would be customer-oriented, growth-supporting and enable to improve the delivery and the time-to-market. The bank started implementing a project for the modernization of its core systems, in order to enable a more flexible and simplified banking infrastructure that will improve the pace of application of new business processes and new product development (time to market), an open banking infrastructure (Open Application Programming Interface Specification) and lead to a future reduction of information technology costs.

Alongside its business leadership and economic and digital initiatives, the Bank is also committed to active involvement in society and the community. In its activities for the community, the Bank focuses on projects in the areas of social employment, accessibility and empowerment of people with disabilities, digital literacy for senior citizens, and financial freedom with a particular emphasis on prudent economic conduct. Bank Hapoalim is the most significant contributor among Israel’s public companies. The Bank’s total social investment in the community in 2020 was NIS 50.5 million.

** Excluding expenses in respect of the provision in connection with the investigation of the group’s business operation with U.S. clients and FIFA, the effect of the closure of the private-banking activity overseas, net profit or loss from the sale of Isracard, and the loss from impairment in respect of the Bank’s investment in Bank Pozitif.