The emirate’s banks have always considered lending as a primary activity thanks to a prudent strategy that has discouraged them from chasing less-proven and riskier alternatives. This policy paid off during the global financial crisis, as there were scant direct exposures to the toxic derivatives that sank some of the world’s biggest lenders...
Insurance penetration in Dubai is very low and the potential for growth is immense, making the sector competitive and highly oriented toward future expansion. However, the current operating environment is challenging, with companies competing on price to capture market share, scale up customer bases and boost profits.
To what extent will a federal Sharia Board ease doing business for Islamic banks in the UAE? CHILWAN: A federal Sharia Board is critical as an overseeing body. It will ensure alignment and adherence to sharia standards and will bring uniformity in the way Islamic banking is done today. Similar to other regulators such as the...
The highlight of recent years for the insurance sector has been the long-awaited arrival of new regulations that promise a broad overhaul of several key areas of the sector: auditing, the calculation of technical provisions, governance, asset valuation, increased policyholder rights, and solvency and provisioning regulations. Those elements...
One of the core features of Dubai’s banking system is self-reliance. In what is generally a well-capitalised part of the world, lenders have been able to minimise their participation in global lending markets, and have not historically experimented with unconventional foreign securities or worried about what would happen if international...
The past 15 years have seen major advances in capital markets activity in Dubai. The financial sector free zone, the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), has gone from idea to reality, and the emirate recently became the world’s largest market for sukuk (Islamic bonds). However, development has been uneven across types of...
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