Financing

Financing your business

Financing questions arrive later than registration questions, and the reason is unglamorous: almost every lender wants to see the company trade before it will lend to it. A company with a licence and no history is, to a UAE bank, a company with no history.

Business credit and working capital

UAE banks and a growing number of fintech lenders offer working-capital facilities to established companies. What they underwrite is the statement history: months of it, on a UAE account, showing money moving in and out. That is why this is not available in a company's first weeks, and it is why the sequence matters more than the shopping.

The account itself is the constraint. Opening one routinely takes longer than everything in registration put together — see banking — and no statement history accrues until it exists. Founders who plan to be borrowing in month three are usually still opening the account in month three.

Invoice financing

For companies invoicing larger clients on delayed payment terms, invoice financing — selling the receivable at a discount for immediate cash — is increasingly available through both banks and dedicated fintech providers in the UAE market.

It is worth separating from a loan, because what is being assessed is different. A working-capital facility is underwritten on your company. An invoice facility is largely underwritten on your customer's ability to pay, which is why a young company invoicing a large, creditworthy client can sometimes access it well before it could access credit of its own.

Buying property through your company

The loan-to-value caps most people have heard quoted — 80% for UAE nationals and 75% for expatriates on a first property valued at AED 5 million or less — come from the Central Bank's mortgage regulations, and they are written for individual borrowers. A company buying a property is not assessed under them. It is assessed as a corporate borrower, which in practice means terms set case by case, commonly with a personal guarantee from the shareholders and a shorter tenor than a household mortgage. Checked 30 August 2026.

One consequence is worth knowing before the structure is chosen rather than after. The Golden Visa property route asks for AED 2,000,000 of unmortgaged value — see the Golden Visa route. Financing the purchase efficiently and qualifying for residency through it are therefore two goals that can quietly work against each other, and which one the structure serves is a decision, not a detail.