FeeX Ltd., which has developed a crowdsourcing system for comparing management fees at provident and study funds, has entered one of the sectors with the greatest effect on Israelis' - welfare pension funds. The company's product, through a simple scan of a pension fund's quarterly or annual report, which is then uploaded onto the company's site, checks whether the user is paying higher management fees than other users.
FeeX's algorithms can neutralize irrelevant factors, such as employees of large companies who receive preferential terms, which make them unsuitable for comparison, and provides an easy-to-use fixed template for bargaining with provident, study, and pension funds for people unfamiliar with financial jargon.
FeeX's entry into the pension market, which touches on most Israelis' lives, enables them to lower the management fees they pay, if they pay too much. FeeX CEO Yoav Zuriel says that management fees currently account for a third of financial savings. He says that the new tool's trial period found that the average Israeli's savings by reducing management fees on the deposits and accumulation can reach NIS 50,000, and the potential total savings are NIS 40 million for the 1,000 savers who participated in the pilot.
"FeeX is here to break the asymmetry in the financial market, one of the results of which is inflated management fees and commissions, redundant insurance policies and exorbitant premiums," says Zuriel. "FeeX will enter every place that exploits the fact that the public has inadequate knowledge, and will fix and change it. It will no longer be possible to take a third of our savings for old age."
FeeX was founded in 2012 by Zuriel and two partners at the Zell Entrepreneurship Program at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. Waze co-founder Uri Levine is the company's chairman and investors. FeeX has raised $3.1 million to date from Levine and Blumberg Capital.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 21, 2014
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