Guide
Your bank asked for proof of source of funds. Here is which Israeli document answers each request.
A compliance officer's email — "please provide evidence of your source of wealth" — is not asking what is in your account. It is asking where each part of it came from, and it wants documents that show it. Here is how the standard requests map onto Israeli paperwork, what each document has to look like in English, and whether it needs a certified translation.
What the request is actually asking for
Source of funds and source of wealth are used almost interchangeably in the emails people receive. Strictly, source of funds is where one particular transfer came from and source of wealth is how you accumulated your money overall — but both are answered the same way: with documents that show an event, not a balance.
That is the part most people miss. A statement showing a large sum sitting in an account proves the money exists; it does not prove where it came from. The officer is assembling a story with a beginning — you earned it, you sold a property, you inherited it, you were given it, your business made it — and every claim in that story needs paper behind it. Banks, brokers and e-money institutions all run some version of this check — the large retail brokers such as Interactive Brokers, Saxo and Swissquote, the e-money and neobank providers such as Revolut and Wise, and private banks generally. So do the reviews that repeat years into a relationship.
The destination changes the flavor of the request — Cyprus, Portugal, Greece, Switzerland, the UK — but not the Israeli documents that answer it. And if you are earlier in the process, still opening the account or simply proving current income, the guide on documents for a bank abroad has the plain list.
Income and employment: the Israeli document behind each request
Compliance request lists are written in generic English — "salary evidence", "annual income confirmation", "employer's confirmation on letterhead". Each of them has an Israeli document that discharges it exactly.
"Salary or employment income" — תלוש שכר
The monthly payslip, usually the last three to six months. Israeli payslips come off a handful of payroll systems — including Hilan, Malam, Michpal and TML — and each lays out gross, deductions, employer contributions and net in its own way. The English has to keep that layout, because the reviewer is matching the net figure against a credit in your statement.
"Annual income confirmation" — טופס 106
The annual employer certificate: one authoritative document covering a full tax year of pay, withholding and contributions. Where a request spans several years of salaried income, one Form 106 per year is a stronger — and cheaper — answer than sixty payslips.
"Employer's confirmation on letterhead" — אישור העסקה
Some institutions ask for this by name — a confirmation of salary or bonus on the employer's letterhead is a standard line on brokers' source-of-wealth questionnaires. It is short, and it is the one item on this list you have to request rather than download.
"Bank statement showing receipt" — דף חשבון עו"ש
The current-account statement with its running balance. It is the corroborating half of nearly every claim on this page, which is why it has to be complete: every row, every page, the balance carrying correctly from one page to the next.
"Tax return or assessment" — דוח שנתי / שומת מס
For the self-employed, for rental or investment income, or wherever the salaried picture is incomplete. It also does something a payslip cannot: it shows income that has already been declared to a tax authority.
"Existing obligations" — דוח ריכוז נתונים
The credit data report from the Bank of Israel register. Not a source-of-wealth document itself, but frequently requested alongside one when the institution wants to see what you owe as well as what you hold.
Wealth events: property, inheritance, gifts, business and long-term savings
These are the documents people are least prepared for. They are also where an Israeli file most often stalls, because several of them have no equivalent abroad and need explaining as well as translating.
"Sale of property" — חוזה מכר and the closing file
The sale contract, the lawyer's or trust-account confirmation, and the statement line showing the proceeds arriving. If the sale was years ago, the contract is still the anchor — and old events come up more often than you would expect.
"Inheritance" — צו ירושה / צו קיום צוואה
The succession order or the probate order, plus whatever paperwork the distribution generated. These are formal, officially issued documents; the English has to carry the file number, the parties and the operative wording precisely, because that is what makes them checkable.
"Gift" — מכתב מתנה / הסכם מתנה
A gift letter or gift agreement naming the giver, the amount and the date, together with the giver's own evidence of where the money came from. Compliance officers routinely follow a gift one step further back.
"Investment or brokerage holdings" — דוח יתרות
A holdings or balances report from an Israeli bank's investment arm or from a broker: securities, funds, valuations and the cash position. Layout matters more here than almost anywhere — these are dense grids, and a reformatted version cannot be read against the original at all.
"Long-term savings and pension" — קרן השתלמות, קופת גמל, קרן פנסיה
Israel-specific instruments with no clean foreign counterpart. A study fund is not a pension and not an ordinary deposit account; a provident fund is not a retirement account as most countries define one. These statements need translating — and, often, a line of explanation alongside — otherwise the reviewer sees a substantial balance they cannot classify.
"Business profits" — דוחות כספיים
Annual financial statements or a profit-and-loss account for a company or a licensed self-employed business, plus the dividend or drawing evidence if that is how the money reached you personally.
"State benefits" — אישורי ביטוח לאומי
National Insurance Institute confirmations: entitlement, benefit periods, lump sums. Often the answer where part of the money is not employment income at all.
"Account confirmation" — אישור ניהול חשבון
The account-management letter: a one-page bank letter confirming the account, its holders and its details. Trivial to obtain, requested constantly, and worth putting in the same batch as everything else.
The rule underneath all of it: an origin document, plus the line where the money landed
A bank statement alone is not enough — you have probably been told that already. Here is what to do instead. The rule is simple enough to check your own file against: every wealth event you claim needs two things — a document showing the event, and the line in a statement showing the money arriving.
Sale contract plus the credit for the proceeds. Form 106 plus the twelve salary credits. Succession order plus the distribution transfer. Gift letter plus the incoming payment. A file built in pairs answers the follow-up question before it is asked; a file holding only one half of each pair produces a second request, and a second request costs weeks.
It also tells you what to translate. An origin document without the statement is an assertion. A statement without the origin document is a number.
Does it need a certified translation — and who signs it?
For most bank and broker files what the file rests on is a certified translation: a complete, faithful translation delivered with a signed certificate of accuracy that names the translator, identifies the documents it covers, and states that the translation is, to the best of the translator's knowledge and ability, a true, complete and accurate translation of the original. That is what compliance teams generally work from, and a signed certificate is available with anything we translate.
Notarization is a separate step. In Israel its 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 is worth paying for when your institution asks for it; institutions that want it normally say so in writing, in wording you can match exactly. What rarely pays is notarizing an entire bundle speculatively, on the theory that heavier looks safer. Ask first.
For comparison, our own prices are published in full on the pricing page: a payslip from ₪99 including VAT (₪85 each for three or more), Form 106 from ₪149, a bank statement of up to three pages from ₪129, a tax assessment from ₪189, and the signed certificate of accuracy included on request. Longer or unusually complex documents are quoted by length, and a whole source-of-wealth set is quoted in full before any work begins. Most quotes come back within a few hours and always within two business days.
An apostille is rarely part of this. An apostille authenticates a public document, and payslips, bank statements, Form 106, brokerage reports and company accounts are private commercial records, so they are not apostilled directly. An apostille can only enter by the notarial route — a notary's certification of the translation can itself be apostilled, at a Magistrates' Court in Israel — and a request for that in a bank compliance review is unusual. If your institution's written request asks for one, send us the wording and we'll set out the steps. Israel also keeps no register of sworn translators, so there is no such certification to obtain: the translator's own signed certificate is what stands behind the file.
Why fidelity decides it here more than anywhere else
No statute prescribes the form the translation has to take. European anti-money-laundering law does require institutions to establish where a customer's funds and wealth came from, but it leaves each institution to set its own document requests — so acceptance comes down to one person's judgment: a compliance officer deciding whether a set of documents looks like what it claims to be. That changes what a good translation has to do.
The officer will often hold the Hebrew original beside the English. They cannot read the Hebrew, but they can see whether the two documents have the same table, the same columns, the same number of rows, the same totals in the same places. That comparison is the basis of their confidence, and a reformatted summary destroys it. A tidy English paragraph describing what a payslip contains is, in this context, worse than nothing: it removes exactly the cross-check the reviewer is performing.
So: the same layout, every line present, every identifier intact, arithmetic that reconciles. Whether the reviewer articulates it or not, that is what is being tested.
Sending documents this sensitive to a translator
It is a fair question, and the one people ask most often before ordering: these are payslips, account statements, an inheritance file, a business's accounts. Who ends up holding them?
What makes a translation trustworthy is not a stamp. It is a named person who signs the certificate and can be asked about it afterwards; documents handled in strict confidence — used only to prepare your translations, never published, and never shared or reused for anyone else; and a way of working that puts the original alongside the English so anything we did can be checked rather than taken on faith. Nothing is uploaded through this website — documents reach us directly, and exactly how they are handled is set out in the privacy policy.
Keep the set, and translate it in one batch
A source-of-wealth request is not only an onboarding event. Enhanced due-diligence reviews recur, they can arrive years into a relationship with an institution you have banked with quietly, and they can ask about a wealth event a decade old. Once the English set exists, keep it: the next request is mostly a matter of forwarding what you already have.
And translate the bundle together. Officers compare documents against one another looking for alignment, so a file where your employer is spelled three ways across three documents — or where your own name matches your passport in two places and not the third — generates queries that have nothing to do with your money. One translator working across the whole set is what keeps those spellings identical.
If there is a deadline on the request, or the account is restricted pending documents, say so in your first message. Every document is quoted before any work starts, and a stated date can usually be met.
Common questions
Does source-of-funds evidence have to be translated?
If the documents are in Hebrew and the institution works in English, in practice yes. A compliance officer will not sign off on a document they cannot read, and a colleague who happens to speak some Hebrew is not a substitute for a translation that can be filed. What institutions ask for is a translation a named person has certified — and machine output fails on exactly the details that matter here: layout, identifiers and figures.
Is a bank statement enough on its own?
Usually not, and in our experience it is one of the most common reasons a file gets a second request. A statement proves money is there and shows it arriving; it does not show where it came from. Pair each claimed source with the document behind it — a sale contract, a Form 106, a succession order, a gift letter — and with the statement line that corresponds to it. That pairing is what turns a balance into evidence.
Do I need a notarized translation for a bank or a broker?
Generally not. Most KYC and compliance files rest on a certified translation with a signed certificate of accuracy. Notarization is a separate statutory step, priced on a regulated scale that rises with the length of the document; if your institution requires it, it will normally tell you so in writing — send us that wording and we will set out the steps. What we would not recommend is notarizing a whole bundle speculatively.
My account is restricted and there is a deadline. How fast can this be done?
Put the date in your first message. Most single documents are ready within a few days, a stated deadline can usually be met, and a larger bundle is scheduled with you in advance so you know what lands when. If you have to reply to the institution before everything is finished, it generally reads better to send the complete set at once than to send it in pieces.
Can I translate only the pages that matter?
You can, and it is usually a false economy. Financial documents work as evidence because they are continuous — once rows or pages are missing, nothing cross-checks and the reviewer has to assume there may be more they have not seen. If cost is the concern, tell us the budget and we will quote the full set rather than cut into a document.
They are asking about a property sale from ten years ago. What if I cannot produce everything?
It comes up more often than people expect, particularly in periodic reviews. Translate what does exist — the sale contract, the lawyer's confirmation, whatever statement pages you can still obtain — and be straightforward with the institution about what is missing and why. A partial trail presented plainly reads far better than a gap left unexplained.
What is a קרן השתלמות statement in English?
A study fund: an Israeli long-term savings vehicle funded by employer and employee contributions, with tax advantages and no direct counterpart in most countries. We translate the statement faithfully and keep the instrument's Israeli name visible alongside the English, so a reviewer can see both what it is and that it is neither a pension nor an ordinary deposit. The same applies to a provident fund (קופת גמל) and to pension statements.
Does it have to be in the country's language, or is English enough?
English is enough for the large majority of bank, broker and compliance files, because in practice English is widely accepted by compliance departments across Europe. The exceptions are real but specific — a notary handling a deed, a municipality, an authority that demands the local language — and the guide on documents for a bank abroad sets them out in full.
A compliance officer asked where the money came from?
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