Claims submitted to the National Insurance
Last year, over 52 million claims were submitted to the National Insurance. About 77% of them made via the Personal Service website, 12% through call centers (more than 5 million claims), 4% through public reception and another 4% via the self-service stations across the country.
The National Insurance has opened, since the Coronavirus crisis, a large number of public service channels, both frontal and digital, and it appears to be a significant change in the claims most of which by far turned out to be digital claims.
Whereas before Covid-19 some 21 million claims were submitted via the National Insurance's website, today this number surged to some 40 million claims. From frontal public reception pre-Covid-19 came about 3.2 million claims across the country, and today this number dropped to 2.1 million.
It must be stressed, that the number claims decreased relative to the Coronavirus crisis period where the overall amount of claims reached about 80 million for all service channels in 2020, and about 62 million claims in 2021.
Benefit payments
In the last years, the National Insurance has distributed some 4 million payments per month to Israeli citizens totaling about 115 billion NIS.
The most paid allowance is the old-age pension paid to over 1 million citizens and reaching 36 billion NIS.
The next most paid allowance last year is the general disability, attendance and disabled child allowance paid for some 470 thousand residents for a total of about 23 billion NIS. Next comes the unemployment benefit paid to about 60 thousand jobless people and totaling about 3 billion NIS, then (fourth place) the long-term care benefit for some 300 thousand elderly people totaling around 14 billion NIS.
Child allowance paid for more than 3 million children in Israel, totaling around 8.6 billion NIS.
Work-injury benefit paid to some 140 thousand residents and totaling around 7.1 billion NIS.
The National Insurance is the main funding source of benefits, and out of some 115 billion of benefit payments, 103 billion NIS were paid from the budget of the National Insurance, and 12 billion from the Ministry of Finance.
Collection data
Aside from the actuarial situation of the National Insurance which is still on the agenda, collection from salaried employees is, significantly, the largest part, and over 4 million salaried workers per year represent about 90% of payments in the calendar year. Around 704 thousand self-employed represent about 8.5% of payments. As mentioned, collection from the National Insurance is based on the "mutual warranty" system, which uses current income to pay for benefits distributed to those in need, and in parallel to ensure a period of insurance in the future for the citizen.
Quarantine benefit to the self-employed and employers
Last year, quarantine benefits were paid to the self-employed for a total of 71 million NIS and some 178 million NIS for quarantine benefits to employers.
The value of unpaid leave exemption for employers, regarding their employees - reached about 458 million NIS.
Yarona Shalom, Acting Director General of the National Insurance: "Over the last years and due to the Coronavirus crisis, the National Insurance became more accessible, more available and more digital. We didn't give up on frontal interactions with the public, but if there is a way to prevent bureaucracy and seamlessly give response to a citizen, that's great.
There is no doubt that the National Insurance that takes care of all Israeli residents with all aspects of their lives from birth until they pass away, is the most important social organization in Israel and gives the possibility, especially in times of crisis, to provide relief and aid to those in need".