The dollar currency is now in focus mainly because of its sharp jump against the shekel, but it is still a necessary tool for many.
Whether you are a careful investor or just flying abroad, the fees paid to the bank when converting to foreign currency are of great importance, especially when large amounts are involved.
We checked for you how much it would cost to convert 100 thousand shekels to dollars in the bank account at the branch, and the results are not surprising at all.
In order to perform the comparison, we contacted the five major banks and the digital bank One Zero, and asked to check the costs of performing this conversion.
The act of buying foreign currency for the account is charged with two costs - the conversion fee and the conversion margin. The conversion margin is calculated as follows: the banks publish a buying rate and a selling rate, their average is the middle rate, and how far the buying and selling rate is from the middle - this is the margin.
relatively small gaps
As you can see, the differences between the five major banks are relatively small, and the cost to convert 100,000 shekels to dollars in a bank account ranges between 990 shekels (at Bank Hapoalim and Bank HaMizrachi) and 1,120 shekels at Bank Leumi.
At the digital bank One Zero you can perform this operation at the lowest cost - NIS 600 (NIS 100 conversion fee and NIS 500 conversion margin).
The findings are not surprising in light of the fact that the digital bank's model is "leaner".
This is a bank without branches for the public, so the bank's costs are also lower.
It is important to note, from our examination it appears that the conversion fees are lower when the operation is carried out digitally and not through the teller at the bank, which can save several tens of shekels (in our example) and of course depends on the conversion amount.
Bank Leumi // Photo: Yehoshua Yosef // Bank Leumi,
So, for example, at Bank Leumi the digital conversion fee is lower and stands at 0.16%, instead of 0.2% at the branch;
At Discount Bank, the digital conversion fee is 0.17%, compared to the 0.19% conversion fee through a clerk;
And at the International Bank, the conversion fee on the website or in the app is 0.0875%, compared to 0.175% through a clerk.
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