Financial Services

As the first emirate in the UAE to roll out mandatory health coverage, Abu Dhabi’s insurance sector has benefitted from over a decade of strong growth in both the life and general lines, with the UAE home to the region’s largest and most mature insurance market. Still, 2015 was a difficult year for the industry, as underwriters struggled with prevailing low global oil prices, increasing market...

Abu Dhabi’s sharia-compliant finance sector, traditionally led by its Islamic banking industry, has expanded to include an increasing array of activities in areas such as insurance offerings and asset management. An environment of low oil prices has put pressure on margins in 2016 but, with nearly a quarter of assets in the UAE held by sharia-compliant institutions, the industry is firmly...

Despite the headwinds of low oil prices and recent regional political turbulence, Abu Dhabi’s stock exchange put in a relatively strong performance in 2016, with the main index posting a 5% gain for the year. A sizeable sovereign bond sale also injected life into the emirate’s nascent debt market, reviving a yield curve that had been interrupted by a seven-year absence of sovereign issuances....

Despite undergoing a profitability squeeze in 2016, Abu Dhabi’s banking sector nonetheless demonstrated its ability to expand its asset base during a period of difficult economic conditions. A recovery in deposit growth means that liquidity concerns have abated, while the stabilisation of oil prices and continued expansion of the non-oil economy brought cheer at the outset of 2017. The sector...