The UAE insurance market is entering a materially different phase of development.
Gross written premiums reached AED 75.2 billion in 2025, increasing 15.5% year-on-year. Gross paid claims increased 11% to AED46.2 billion, while insurance company assets reached AED166.7 billion. The number of policies written rose to approximately 17.8 million.
At first glance, this is a straightforward growth story.
It is not.
Behind the headline numbers are several shifts that matter to insurers, brokers, employers, CFOs and business owners: stronger capitalisation, greater risk retention, expanded compulsory health coverage, changing commercial insurance pricing, higher expectations around governance and data, and growing exposure to risks ranging from extreme weather to cyber incidents.
The opportunity for businesses is therefore not simply to buy more insurance.
It is to become more deliberate about which risks they transfer, which risks they retain, how much protection they buy, and whether their existing insurance architecture still reflects the business they have become.
The numbers behind the growth
The Central Bank of the UAE’s 2025 data provide useful context.
UAE insurance indicator | 2024 | 2025 | Change |
| Gross written premiums | AED65.1bn | AED75.2bn | +15.5% |
| Property & liability premiums | AED26.3bn | AED31.4bn | +19.2% |
| Health premiums | AED31.3bn | AED35.5bn | +13.5% |
| Persons & fund accumulation | AED7.5bn | AED8.3bn | +11.2% |
| Gross claims paid | AED41.6bn | AED46.2bn | +11.0% |
| Technical provisions | AED92.2bn | AED99.2bn | +7.6% |
| Total invested assets | AED84.9bn | AED88.4bn | +4.1% |
| Total assets | AED155.5bn | AED166.7bn | +7.2% |
Source: Central Bank of the UAE.
Perhaps more significant than the premium number is the sector’s capital position.
The ratio of insurers’ own funds to the Solvency Capital Requirement increased from 195.7% at the end of 2024 to 256.9% at the end of 2025. The ratio of own funds to the Minimum Capital Requirement reached 423.3%.
That indicates a sector with considerably greater capacity to absorb risk.
But greater capacity also creates greater responsibility.
What does it mean for insurance companies?
1. Growth cannot be allowed to disguise underwriting discipline
Premiums increasing by 15.5% while claims paid increased by 11% may appear positive.
However, paid claims should not be confused with the ultimate cost of claims or an insurer’s loss ratio. Reserving movements, claims incurred but not yet paid, reinsurance recoveries, expenses and the mix of business written all affect profitability.
This distinction became particularly visible in 2024.
According to UAE government statistics, property and liability claims paid increased by 83% during 2024, particularly across fire and motor insurance. CBUAE also linked the increase in claims to the exceptional weather events experienced during the year.
For insurers, the implication is clear:
Growth in premium must be accompanied by better pricing, catastrophe modelling, reserving, accumulation monitoring and claims analytics.
Rapid top-line growth without equivalent risk intelligence can create tomorrow’s balance-sheet problem.
2. Insurers are retaining more risk
The UAE insurance sector’s premium retention ratio increased from 54.9% in 2024 to 56.6% in 2025.
In simple terms, insurers are retaining a greater proportion of the business they underwrite rather than passing it to reinsurers.
That can be commercially attractive. More retained premium can mean more retained underwriting income.
But it also means more retained exposure.
Boards and management should therefore be asking:
- Is reinsurance purchasing aligned with the changing portfolio?
- Are catastrophe concentrations understood?
- Are risk limits keeping pace with premium growth?
- Does capital allocation properly reflect the risks being retained?
- Are stress-testing scenarios severe enough?
- Are reinsurance counterparties and recoveries being monitored effectively?
Reinsurance strategy is no longer merely a procurement exercise. It is increasingly a capital-management decision.
3. Health insurance is becoming a structural growth market
Health remained the largest insurance category in the UAE in 2025, generating AED 35.5 billion in premiums.
One important driver is the extension of health insurance requirements across the UAE.
From 1 January 2025, health insurance became a requirement for private-sector employees and domestic workers across all emirates, with insurance linked to residency issuance or renewal for the relevant population.
For health insurers, TPAs and brokers, this increases the addressable market—but volume alone will not determine the winners.
Medical inflation, provider negotiations, fraud detection, utilisation management, claims analytics and product design will increasingly determine profitability.
The strategic battleground will therefore shift from simply acquiring members to understanding cost per member and quality of risk.
4. Regulation is moving deeper into operations
The UAE’s regulatory direction deserves as much attention as its premium growth.
The CBUAE’s new Insurance Brokers’ Regulation became effective on 15 February 2025 and introduced requirements covering financial soundness, governance, risk management, internal controls, reporting, and client protection.
One particularly important operational change is that premiums for primary insurance must be paid directly by clients to insurance companies. Brokers are prohibited from collecting them. Claims settlements and premium refunds must similarly move directly between insurer and client.
Brokers also face quarterly regulatory reporting requirements, including reviewed interim financial statements, remuneration information and complaints data.
These are not merely compliance changes.
They affect:
cash-flow processes, reconciliations, accounting systems, commission controls, client communication, technology architecture and internal audit.
The insurance sector’s next stage of growth will therefore require stronger operating infrastructure behind the front-end sales organisation.
5. Technology creates both an opportunity and a new insured risk
Digital distribution, automated underwriting, AI-assisted claims management and advanced analytics are changing the economics of insurance.
But digitisation simultaneously creates new exposures.
CBUAE rules already require insurance brokers to maintain cybersecurity and personal-data controls, including safeguards around data breaches and data retention.
The wider commercial market is also responding.
Marsh reported that cyber insurance rates across the Middle East fell approximately 5%–10% in Q4 2025, as additional capacity entered the market. Financial and professional lines also softened, with UAE and Saudi D&O rates declining approximately 15%–20%.
That combination—greater digital risk but greater insurance capacity—creates an interesting window for both insurers and buyers.
What does this mean for businesses outside insurance?
This may be the more important part of the story.
The growth of the insurance market should prompt every CFO and board to ask whether their organisation’s insurance programme has kept pace with the organisation itself.
1. 2026 may be a good year to renegotiate-not merely renew
Commercial insurance markets have become more competitive.
Marsh’s Q1 2026 Global Insurance Market Index reported average commercial insurance rate reductions of 10% across India, the Middle East, and Africa, as capacity and competition increased. Globally, commercial insurance rates declined for the seventh consecutive quarter.
The message for businesses is not simply:
“Can we reduce our premium?”
A better question is:
“What additional protection can we obtain for the same risk budget?”
Businesses should consider negotiating:
- higher policy limits;
- reduced deductibles;
- broader business-interruption cover;
- improved cyber cover;
- D&O enhancements;
- wider territorial coverage;
- better extensions and sub-limits;
- improved claims provisions.
A softer insurance market can be used to improve the quality of protection, not merely reduce cost.
2. Property values may have moved faster than insurance limits
The UAE has experienced substantial growth in property, construction, manufacturing, logistics, and infrastructure.
That creates a common but dangerous problem: underinsurance.
A policy originally structured three years ago may no longer adequately reflect:
- replacement cost of buildings;
- machinery values;
- inventory;
- fit-outs;
- reconstruction costs;
- increased turnover;
- additional locations;
- longer supply chains.
The 2024 weather-related claims experience makes this particularly relevant.
Businesses should therefore revisit their sums insured and business-interruption calculations, rather than automatically rolling last year’s numbers into the next renewal.
3. Business interruption deserves board-level attention
Property insurance protects an asset.
Business-interruption insurance is intended to protect the earnings generated by that asset.
The distinction matters.
A factory can be repaired. The greater economic damage may arise from six months of lost production, contractual penalties, additional logistics costs, and lost customers.
Companies should review whether their indemnity period is long enough and whether declared gross profit or revenue calculations accurately reflect the financial consequences of a major disruption.
For CFOs, insurance therefore intersects directly with business continuity and financial resilience.
4. Cyber insurance should be reconsidered
Cyber exposure has moved beyond the IT department.
Ransomware, data breaches, business email compromise, digital supply-chain failures and AI-enabled fraud can create financial, operational, regulatory and reputational losses.
At the same time, additional insurer capacity has been putting downward pressure on cyber insurance pricing in the region.
Companies that previously considered cyber cover too expensive may therefore want to revisit the market.
But insurance cannot substitute for controls.
Multi-factor authentication, privileged-access management, backups, incident-response planning and employee awareness increasingly determine not only whether a business is insurable, but also the quality and price of the coverage available.
5. D&O insurance is becoming relevant to a broader range of businesses
Directors and officers increasingly face personal exposure from regulatory investigations, shareholder disputes, employment matters, cyber incidents, governance failures and insolvency-related decisions.
The substantial increase in regional capacity for D&O insurance means privately held groups, family businesses and growing mid-market companies should not assume it is relevant only to listed multinational companies.
This is particularly important where businesses are:
- raising external capital;
- expanding internationally;
- adding independent directors;
- undertaking acquisitions;
- reorganising group structures;
- operating in regulated industries.
6. Insurance should form part of transaction planning
Insurance is frequently reviewed after an acquisition, restructuring, or expansion.
It should often be reviewed before it.
A transaction can change:
- insured entities;
- ownership;
- directors;
- geographic exposure;
- property values;
- employee populations;
- revenue;
- cyber exposure;
- contractual liabilities.
Businesses undertaking M&A or major restructuring should therefore include insurance within their transaction checklist alongside tax, legal, financial and regulatory due diligence.
A practical agenda for 2026
For insurance companies and brokers, the priority should be:
Area | Management question |
| Underwriting | Is premium growth producing sustainable risk-adjusted returns? |
| Reinsurance | Are we consciously choosing how much risk to retain? |
| Reserving | Do assumptions reflect emerging claims patterns? |
| Regulatory reporting | Can our systems produce reliable regulatory information efficiently? |
| Data & cyber | Are controls keeping pace with digital distribution? |
| Finance | Are IFRS, management reporting and profitability analytics giving management the right information? |
| Governance | Can the board see risk concentration, claims development and capital consumption clearly? |
For businesses buying insurance, the agenda is different:
Area | Question to ask before renewal |
| Property | Are current replacement values still adequate? |
| Business interruption | How long would full recovery take? |
| Medical | Does the programme balance employee benefits with cost control? |
| Cyber | Does coverage reflect today’s digital exposure? |
| D&O | Are directors appropriately protected? |
| Limits | Have revenue, assets and exposures grown beyond existing limits? |
| Claims | Have previous claims revealed gaps in policy wording? |
The bigger picture
The UAE insurance sector’s growth is another indicator of a broader transformation taking place across the economy.
As businesses become larger, more sophisticated and more internationally connected, the risks surrounding them also become more complex.
Insurance consequently moves from being an annual administrative purchase to becoming part of financial strategy, governance and enterprise risk management.
For insurers, the next stage will be about converting premium growth into sustainable underwriting performance while meeting higher expectations around capital, technology, governance and consumer protection.
For businesses, the opportunity is different.
A stronger and more competitive insurance market creates the opportunity to buy protection more intelligently.
At NR Doshi & Partners, we increasingly see risk, finance, tax, governance, systems and compliance converging. For insurance-sector clients, that can mean strengthening regulatory reporting, accounting, internal controls, tax, technology and governance frameworks. For businesses in other sectors, it means ensuring that significant risks and financial exposures are properly understood as the organisation grows.
Because the important question is no longer simply:
“Are we insured?”
It is:
“If something significant happens, is the business financially prepared for it?”
This article is intended as general business commentary and does not constitute insurance, legal, tax, or investment advice. Specific coverage and regulatory requirements should be assessed based on individual circumstances.
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