Tehila Kalagy

Financial institutions around the world are aware of customers' ambitions to conduct their financial activities in accordance with their values. In response, they are entering the impact-economy field. Israeli banking today does not operate according to Jewish law, since there is a bypass called "Heter Iska", which allows one to have unlimited banking activity. We used a quantitative model to estimate the expected economic value of a new banking track tailored for religious Jews who want to avoid religiously prohibited usury in a manner more compatible with Jewish law. Our survey revealed that, on average, employees would be willing to forgo 16 % of their salary for the benefit of working for a bank that offered such products and that customers would be willing to pay 80 % higher management fees for such products. These findings suggest that such products could be commercially viable. This work falls into two topical areas covered by this journal: Religion and Attitudes (specifically, corporate behavior) and Religious Practices (specifically, economic behavior of individuals and groups of individuals).