Guide
A mortgage abroad on Israeli income: what the bank wants from your statements
Your Israeli current account is the evidence behind everything else in the file — the salary you declared, the deposit you saved, the money that will service the loan. Here is what a lender abroad actually checks when it reads that account in English, and what makes a translated statement fail that reading.
Why the statements carry the most weight
Payslips and a Form 106 tell a lender what you were paid. The bank statement tells it what actually arrived, what left, and what is still there — which is why underwriters usually read the statements last and hardest. Everything else in the file gets checked against them.
That makes the translation a verification document rather than a reading document. The reviewer is not following your account history out of interest; they are confirming that the salary credits match the payslips, that the deposit is savings rather than a loan that landed last week, and that the account behaves the way the application says it does.
What a reviewer checks, line by line
The running balance reconciles
Opening balance, every movement, closing balance: the chain has to add up down the page and carry correctly from page to page and month to month. A balance column that doesn't reconcile is the fastest way to lose a reviewer's confidence in the whole file.
Every transaction line is present
Not a selection, not only the relevant ones. A translated statement with fewer rows than the original can't be matched against it — and a reviewer who finds one missing row has to assume there may be others.
Counterparty names read the same way every time
The employer crediting your salary, the lender taking your existing mortgage, transfers between your own accounts: each has to be rendered identically in every month you submit, so a recurring payment can be traced across the set.
Dates and number formats are unambiguous
Israeli statements are written for Israeli readers — day-first dates, Hebrew month forms, and separator conventions a reader abroad can take two ways. A good translation resolves that ambiguity instead of reproducing it.
Identifiers survive intact
Account and branch numbers, references, cheque numbers, value dates, currency. These are what let a reviewer tie a line in the statement to a line in another document.
Why a summary translation gets sent back
The job we are most often asked to redo is a translation that summarizes: a page of totals, a paragraph describing what the account shows, or a statement with the unimportant rows dropped to save cost. It is a false economy every time.
A lending file runs on cross-checks, and a summary breaks all of them. There is nothing to reconcile, nothing to match against the payslips, and no way to show the English corresponds to the Hebrew original beside it. Reviewers rarely argue with a summary — they simply ask for the statement again, and the file waits.
Certified, notarized or sworn — what banks usually accept
Three words get used as if they were one. A certified translation is a faithful, complete translation delivered with a signed certificate of accuracy identifying the document and the translator. A notarized translation adds a notary's certification; under Israel's Notaries Law, a notary may certify that a translation is correct only where the notary is fluent in both languages, and otherwise certifies the translator's signed declaration rather than the translation. That fee is set by regulation rather than by the notary — a statutory scale updated each January, which in 2026 runs from ₪251 plus VAT (about ₪296) for the first 100 words and rises with the length of the document — and it adds days. For Hebrew and English, many Israeli notaries are fluent in both and certify the translation directly — at the statutory fee, which rises with the document's length. A sworn translation is the continental European model, where a court registers the translator; Israel keeps no such register, so the local equivalent is one of the first two.
As a general rule, mortgage files abroad are built on the first of these: the translation itself, with a certificate of accuracy answering who stands behind it. The heavier routes appear when a notary handling the deed, or a particular bank's compliance policy, calls for them — and that request almost always arrives in writing, with wording you can match exactly. Ask before you buy: the gap is hundreds of shekels per document.
Why layout fidelity matters more than it sounds
A reviewer holding the Hebrew original on one side and the English on the other should be able to move between them without reading Hebrew. When the English mirrors the original — same table, same columns, same order — that comparison takes seconds, and the document reads as what it is: the bank's own statement, in a language the reviewer can use.
Retyped as a plain list or a letter, the same content loses its provenance. It may be perfectly accurate and still look like nothing the issuing bank ever produced — and looking unfamiliar is enough to slow a file down.
What to send, and what happens next
Send the statements as the bank issued them. The PDF downloaded from your Israeli bank's site is ideal, because the text in it is real text rather than a photograph. Send the whole period the lender asked for, all pages, in one batch — consistent naming across months is far easier to guarantee when the documents are translated together.
Every document is quoted before any work starts, so you know the price of the set in advance: statements start at ₪129 including VAT for up to three pages, and longer histories are quoted by length. Most single documents turn around in a few days, and a stated deadline can usually be met — tell us the date the lender gave you.
Income evidence travels with the statements. If the lender has also asked for payslips and the annual employer certificate, translate them in the same batch so names, employers and figures line up across the file.
Common questions
How many months of statements will the lender want?
Three to six months of the main current account is the usual request, and some lenders ask for twelve where income is self-employed or irregular. Ask for the exact period in writing and translate all of it — a partial period invites a second request and another wait.
Can you translate only the pages with the salary credits?
We can, but lenders generally won't accept it. A statement works as evidence because it is continuous; once rows or pages are missing, the balance chain proves nothing. If cost is the concern, tell us the budget and we'll quote the full set rather than trim the document.
My statement is a scan or a photo. Is that a problem?
It's workable, but say so when you send it. A weak scan is read more slowly, and any figure we cannot read with certainty is flagged to you rather than guessed. Where you can, download the original PDF from your bank instead.
Do you handle joint or multi-currency accounts?
Yes. Currency labels stay exactly as issued, and joint account holders are rendered to match the way their names appear elsewhere in the file — worth confirming with us before we start, so every document agrees.
Is a certificate of accuracy included?
A signed certificate of translation accuracy is included on request with any document we translate. If your lender has asked for notarization or an apostille, send us its wording and we'll set out the steps.
Sending Israeli statements to a lender abroad?
Print-ready PDF · handled in confidence · a few days for most jobs