Amid the ongoing fallout from the Slice investment scandal, the head of Israel’s Capital Market Authority, Amit Gal, said regulators will not tolerate anyone exploiting the victims again and turning them against the authorities trying to help them. Speaking at TheMarker and Migdal’s “Financial Future” conference in a conversation with Calcalist reporter Shaked Green Arava, Gal said that since he took office in 2022, the amount of regulated assets has more than doubled while the market’s power structure has barely changed.
Gal argued that regulation must adapt to a rapidly changing market in which institutional investors wield much greater influence. He said supervision must be “balanced and effective,” with strong checks on institutional power, so that these investors remain financial players and do not act like controlling shareholders shaping business activity. “This is essential for a healthy balance among all players and for growth,” he said.
On the debate over small-bank reform and supervision of financial holding companies, Gal said the issue has become central because large insurers and investment houses operate through holding-company structures that create “major challenges and uncertainty.” He said regulators need to ask whether those structures serve consumers, competition, the cost of living and economic growth, adding that supervision of holding companies is “critical” to give regulators the right tools.
Asked about Phoenix Holdings’ newly announced reinsurance deal with a foreign reinsurer, Gal said he would not address a specific transaction, but warned that when a local competitor also gains exposure through an unregulated foreign arm, regulators must ask whether it strengthens competition or creates excess power. He also said the dispute over who should supervise holding companies between his authority and the Bank of Israel will end with “white smoke in the end.”
Gal defended the decision to end mortgage advisers’ special perks and discounts, saying the move was meant to reduce distortions in the current market. He said insurance-agency abuses remain serious, including excessive commissions charged to vulnerable people and conduct that borders on fraud. Enforcement has improved sharply, he said, but the root problem is the market structure itself. On preventing another Slice case, Gal said Israel already faces financial frauds worth billions of shekels, many never becoming public, and warned that victims are being exploited again. “We will not accept,” he said, “that someone takes these savers who were harmed and incites them against the state authorities that are their only answer.”
