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Usually, a person pays for pension insurance over the course of his working life; however, as mentioned, the German national insurance gave the new insureds (of which all the Israeli enrollees were such) the right to purchase the insurance rights by means of a retroactive payment, and for this purpose a one-off payment was required to cover the monthly premiums retroactively for the years 1956-80 ("the investment"). Some 3,000 insureds financed their participation in the scheme independently. In the main, it was the enrollee to the German pension who decided the amount of his investment which, in turn, determined the amount of pension he receives. The maximum investment permitted was some DM 100,000 (an investment which yielded a retirement pension of some DM 1,500 a month) . This maximum investment amount was usually profitable to enrollees who were very close to pension age. All the enrollees who invested their own funds (amounts ranging between DM 40,000 and DM 100,000) enjoy the best investment they have ever made.
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