How can I find a deceased relative's lost Israeli pension or provident fund from abroad?

An Israeli pension fund does not write to a foreign address to say that its member has died. That single fact explains why provident and pension savings are the most commonly missed asset in cross-border Israeli estates: unlike an apartment, they generate no municipal tax bill, no tenant, and no annual statement that a family in Toronto or Marseille would ever have reason to open. A relative who left Israel in the 1980s after a decade of salaried work almost certainly has a provident fund (קופת גמל) or pension fund (קרן פנסיה) sitting somewhere, still accruing, still unclaimed.

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Detailed Answer

The search tool is Har HaKesef (הר הכסף), a free Ministry of Finance portal at itur.mof.gov.il, built with the Bank of Israel and launched in 2016 under Proper Conduct of Banking Business Directive 436, the Supervisor of Banks' project for locating dormant deposits and accounts of deceased persons. Banks report into it under Reporting Directive 839; provident funds, pension funds, study funds (קרנות השתלמות) and managers' insurance policies are covered alongside bank deposits. The search key is the deceased's nine-digit Israeli identity number (מספר זהות), together with date of birth and date of death, though the date of birth may be left blank where the family no longer knows it. There is no name-only search, and the output is deliberately thin: the portal names the institution and the product type, and stops there. No balances, no account numbers, no indication of whether one fund or four sit behind a single line of results.

For heirs outside Israel the identity number is the first real obstacle, and it is a bigger one than families expect. A grandmother who left Israel in 1974 may appear in the family's papers only under an anglicised name with no Israeli number anywhere, in which case the number has to be recovered from the Population Registry through an Israeli attorney before any search can begin. The second obstacle arrives after the search succeeds. Har HaKesef tells you that Bank Leumi or Menora Mivtachim holds something; it gives you no standing to collect it. Each institution then runs its own release process, and for a deceased member that process almost always terminates in an Israeli succession order or probate order. It is worth separating two things that the English-language web routinely conflates: a fund reported as dormant has not been seized by anyone. The money remains under the management of the institution holding it.

In Practice: Under Section 2 of the Banking Ordinance 1941 a deposit becomes a פיקדון ללא תנועה (dormant deposit) once ten months pass without an instruction from its owner, and Section 13B then requires the bank to attempt contact and reinvest the funds under the Governor's rules rather than transfer them anywhere. The Har HaKesef search at itur.mof.gov.il is free and returns the holding institution's name only. Under the Supervision of Financial Services (Provident Funds) (Locating Members and Beneficiaries) Regulations 2012, provident and pension funds must query the Population Registry every six months for members' dates of death and then trace beneficiaries themselves, which is why a fund occasionally contacts a family before the family contacts it. The Registrar of Inheritance (רשם הירושות) at the Ministry of Justice charges NIS 597 for a succession order as at 1 January 2026, indexed each January.

Where an asset has been abandoned for far longer, a second and separate regime applies: the Administrator General (האפוטרופוס הכללי) at the Ministry of Justice, under the Administrator General Law 1978, whose Unit for Location and Restitution of Unclaimed Property manages genuinely abandoned property under a court management order. Section 15 of that Law governs when unclaimed property finally passes to the State, currently after ten years for assets other than real estate. This is the only Israeli mechanism that ever moves an asset away from its holder, it runs through the Ministry of Justice rather than the Ministry of Finance, and it is slow enough that heirs who act on discovery are rarely caught by it. Because the release of pension and provident savings turns on the same succession order that governs the rest of the estate, the search and the inheritance file should run together rather than in sequence; our guide to inheriting an Israeli pension or provident fund as a foreign heir sets out how the fund's own beneficiary designation can override the will entirely.

When to Consult a Lawyer

• The deceased's Israeli identity number is unknown or uncertain, which is common for emigrants who left before the 1990s and for women whose Israeli records are under a maiden name. Har HaKesef cannot be searched without it, and recovering it from the Population Registry requires an Israeli representative acting on documented proof of relationship.
• A fund names a beneficiary. Israeli pension and provident savings frequently pass by beneficiary designation rather than through the estate, which means the person the deceased named in 1991 may take the fund ahead of the heirs named in a 2019 will. Discovering this after the succession order has been drafted on the opposite assumption is expensive to unwind.
• The search returns nothing but the family has concrete reason to believe savings exist, such as payslips, an employer's name, or a fund's old correspondence. Har HaKesef reflects only what institutions have reported into it, and a nil result is not proof of absence; direct enquiry to a named fund or to the Administrator General is then the parallel path.

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Speak With an Israeli Attorney

Tracing Israeli pension savings is worth doing before the succession order is filed rather than after, because the assets found determine how the order should be drafted and which institutions must be named.

Contact us for a confidential initial consultation.