As geopolitical tensions, de-globalisation, and economic uncertainty reshape global capital flows, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is consolidating its position as one of the world’s most trusted and resilient financial gateways, according to a new report by Emerging Markets Intelligence & Research (EMIR), supported by Qashio.

The report, ‘Mapping the UAE’s Role as a Global Financial Gateway’, highlights how the UAE is attracting high levels of foreign direct investment and financial activity at a time when capital is retreating from many traditional markets.

Foreign direct investment into the UAE doubled to $40 billion (between 2019 and 2024), reaching record levels even as global FDI stagnated. In 2024, FDI accounted for 40% of the UAE’s gross capital formation, compared to just 4.3% across developed economies, underscoring the country’s growing role as a destination for long-term, trust-led capital.

The scale of activity is accelerating rapidly. The UAE recorded 1,362 FDI projects in 2024, representing a 350% increase since 2020, while assets under management in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) reached $700 billion, growing 58% year-on-year.

According to the report, the UAE’s ability to benefit from global realignment is closely linked to its neutrality, regulatory clarity, and institutional agility.

“The UAE is actually benefiting from the de-globalisation and the geopolitical reorientation of major power blocks. It doesn’t have adversaries, so is able to build economic ties with everyone. The speed with which the government has been able to adapt to and anticipate the new situation is remarkable,” the report notes.

Beyond capital inflows, the research also points to the UAE’s expanding role as a transaction and payments hub, supported by modern financial infrastructure, strong compliance frameworks, and growing confidence among global businesses managing cross-border activity from the region.

From Qashio’s perspective, the UAE’s rise as a financial gateway reinforces the importance of secure, transparent, and compliant financial operations for businesses operating in an increasingly complex global environment.

“As capital flows become more fragmented and regulated, trust and control are no longer optional — they are foundational,” said Armin Moradi, Founder and CEO of Qashio. “Businesses operating from the UAE need full visibility over spending, strong compliance with Central Bank guidance, and the ability to act on financial insights in real time. This report reflects why the UAE has earned global confidence — and how organisations can operate responsibly within that ecosystem.”

The findings position the UAE not only as a safe destination for capital, but as a jurisdiction capable of supporting long-term growth across finance, trade, technology, and digital assets — at a time when global businesses are reassessing where and how they deploy resources.

To learn more about how the UAE is consolidating its role as a trusted global financial gateway and what this means for businesses navigating today’s fragmented capital landscape download the full report here.

By Rakshit Choudhary, CEO, Deriv

The first weeks of 2026 have made one thing clear. AI is no longer moving in steps, it is moving in leaps. Across the Middle East and globally, organisations are spending hundreds of billions on AI, yet most will fail to see a lasting advantage. This isn’t a technology failure, it’s an architectural one. They are using 2026 intelligence to automate 2016 processes that shouldn’t exist in the first place.

One question separates genuine transformation from expensive automation. If you were building this business from scratch today, how would you design it?

 The asymmetry of the legacy burden

Established companies face a challenge startups do not. Every advantage built over time eventually hardens into a constraint. Processes reflect historical decisions made years ago, and systems are optimised for legacy technology.

A startup building your business today wouldn’t carry your infrastructure or justify changes to existing teams; they would simply build what makes sense now. This creates a painful reality where startups move faster not because they are smarter, but because they don’t have to preserve a museum.

At Deriv, we faced this asymmetry head-on. We had to redesign our entire foundation while maintaining over $650 billion in monthly trading volume for 3 million clients. It is the equivalent of building a new aeroplane while flying at 35,000 feet.

Designing for intelligence, not compensating for its absence

Most organisations approach AI by asking, “What can AI do for us?”. That is the wrong question. It leads to incrementalism, existing workflows executed slightly faster.

When we applied “startup thinking” to Deriv, we stopped treating AI as a tool and started treating it as a design constraint:

• Customer service: The answer wasn’t faster scripts, but an AI agent with direct system access. Our agent, Amy, now handles 79% of customer chats globally with 97% satisfaction.
• Engineering: We didn’t just ask for more “copilots.” We built for AI-generated code with built-in quality controls. Today, over 50% of our code is AI-generated, putting us ahead of most software firms in a regulated environment.

Every time we asked the “startup question,” we discovered that legacy processes were designed around constraints that no longer existed. Technology limitations from a decade ago or organisational structures reflecting a much smaller company.

The investment that actually matters: Readiness

AI capability is no longer the bottleneck. Access to breakthroughs is now commoditised and available across markets as quickly as it emerges. The real constraint is organisational readiness.

The most valuable investment we made in 2025 wasn’t software, it was people. We have hired over 100 AI engineers to build AI-native operations, but we also upskilled our existing global workforce. This wasn’t about teaching them to use a chatbot, it was about changing their AI literacy so they instinctively ask if a process should exist at all.

The widening gap

We are at a critical inflection point. Product lifecycles and release timelines that took months now happen in weeks. Companies that redesign workflows for autonomous systems will benefit automatically as AI improves. New capabilities will integrate without disruption.

Conversely, those automating legacy processes will find themselves trapped in a cycle of continuous, expensive rebuilding. By mid-2026, this gap will become permanent.

The startup question isn’t comfortable. It challenges every inherited assumption. But for businesses operating in sophisticated, highly regulated markets, it is the only question that leads to growth rather than mere efficiency.

The time to ask the startup question is now.

Dhruva, a tax advisory firm with deep expertise across the Middle East, and global markets, stated that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is at a clear inflection point in its fiscal evolution. Transfer pricing is moving beyond first-wave rulemaking into an enforcement-led environment where it is increasingly treated as a core element of corporate governance.

Drawing on the UAE Year in Review 2025 report recently launched by Dhruva, the region is moving past inaugural filing seasons and confronting the limits of reactive, post-facto compliance. “The past year has been transformative, representing not merely technical adjustments but a strategic recalibration of the region’s economic architecture,” said Nimish Goel, Leader, Middle East at Dhruva. In this environment, the behavioral reality of a business must align with its legal documentation, as tax authorities raise expectations around demonstrable economic substance.

A central theme in this scrutiny is Key Management Personnel (KMP). Where decision-making occurs, who exercises control, and how governance is evidenced are becoming determinative factors in how profits are attributed and defended. Inconsistencies across HR contracts, organization charts, board minutes, operational reality, and transfer pricing files are increasingly treated as a credibility gap, not a documentation error.

This recalibration is being accelerated by a shift in audit approach. Tax authorities across the GCC are moving from form-based reviews to more sophisticated, data-led scrutiny. Kapil Bhatnagar, Partner at Dhruva, stated that, “A key focus is the ‘invisible backbone’ of many regional groups, common-control and related-party transactions that sit at the heart of multilayered conglomerate structures. Informal arrangements historically treated as low-risk are increasingly being evaluated through an arm’s length lens, including interest-free shareholder loans, uncharged centralized services, legacy intercompany balances, and balance-sheet support. For forward-looking organisations, transfer pricing is no longer a compliance obligation but a strategic enabler.”

In parallel, the UAE has signaled stricter arm’s length expectations for Qualifying Free Zone Persons, with transfer pricing increasingly functioning as the mechanism through which substance is demonstrated under the Corporate Tax regime.

The stakes are further elevated by Pillar Two global minimum tax developments. Effective 2025, most GCC jurisdictions, including the UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain, either implemented or were in the final stages of implementing Domestic Minimum Top-up Taxes (DMTT). Under these rules, intercompany pricing can no longer be treated purely as a compliance variable, since it can materially influence a group’s effective tax rate and potential top-up exposure.

“In response, leading groups are shifting toward operational transfer pricing, embedding pricing policies into ERP workflows to improve year-round accuracy, data integrity, and audit readiness. This is increasingly relevant as audits begin to rely more heavily on data analytics, ERP trails, and transaction-level evidence, with deeper linkage expected between transfer pricing documentation, financial statements, tax returns, and support evidence,” added Kapil.

At the same time, demand is rising for certainty and dispute-prevention mechanisms, including Advance Pricing Agreements (APAs) and Mutual Agreement Procedures (MAPs), particularly for complex cross-border arrangements where predictability is commercially valuable. The UAE has already established a formal framework for clarifications and directives including APAs, confirmed unilateral APA applications from Q4 2025, and introduced a schedule of APA fees effective from January 1, 2026.

As the region moves into its next phase of maturity, Kapil concluded, “The message is clear, the era of fixing and filing is over. The era of governance, digitization, and transparency has begun.”