Why family capital is putting down roots in Dubai
His Excellency Arif Amiri, Chief Executive Officer of DIFC Authority, from DIFC
Arif Amiri
Published: 05/11/2026
5 min read
When families decide where to establish a long-term base for their wealth, the conversation has evolved. Increasingly, families are asking where they can build an environment that protects their legacy, supports the next generation and provides the stability, continuity and legal certainty required to plan for decades ahead.
Dubai International Financial Centre’s (DIFC) H1 2026 results reflect this shift. The number of family-related entities reached 1,408, an increase of 36 per cent year-on-year. Growth at this scale reflects a deep trend: families are making deliberate decisions about where they want to establish their wealth, businesses and legacies for the long term.
Choosing a jurisdiction is an investment decision
Families are assessing the strength of legal and regulatory frameworks with the same discipline they have traditionally applied to credit, currency and market exposure.
This is where DIFC is playing a clear role. As a financial centre operating under an independent common-law legal and regulatory framework, DIFC provides families with a stable and internationally recognised foundation for structuring their wealth. The DIFC Family Arrangements Regulations 2023 provide a firm base for family governance, succession and asset protection.
The ability to establish foundations, holding structures and bespoke governance arrangements within one jurisdiction matters. It reduces complexity, creates greater certainty and allows families to build structures around their long-term objectives rather than having to piece together solutions across multiple jurisdictions.
Succession planning is the real risk families face
For many families, the greatest challenge is not preserving wealth in the current generation. It is ensuring that wealth, values and responsibility are successfully transferred to the next.
Our 2025 DIFC Innovation Hub report, produced in partnership with Julius Baer and Euroclear, found that only around a quarter of high-net-worth individuals have a comprehensive estate plan. At the same time, around USD 1trn in private wealth is expected to transfer to the next generation across the Middle East by 2030. More than half of those surveyed also identified the allocation of assets across an extended family network as too complex to resolve without professional support.
The Family Wealth Centre’s Expert Advisory Council and Next Generation Leadership Programme, both introduced during the UAE’s Year of the Family, are designed to address the issues that matter most to families over the long term: succession planning, family governance, leadership and the preparation of heirs who will inherit not only assets, but responsibility.
The increasing influence of the next generation
The next stage of evolution is increasingly being driven by the next generation.
They are more open to making their family portfolios more sophisticated, including making investing in private equity deals, hedge funds and other alternative asset classes. This requires access to a mature financial ecosystem, which DIFC is able to provide.
Today, DIFC is home to 327 banks and capital markets firms, including 48 private banks, and 592 wealth and asset management firms. This depth provides family offices with access to the expertise, capital and investment opportunities required to operate at an institutional level.
Dubai’s geographic position is equally important. Its time zone enables firms based here to engage across both Asian and American market hours, giving family offices the ability to manage genuinely global mandates from a single location.
The result is an ecosystem in which families can establish their wealth structures, access global markets and build the capabilities required to manage increasingly complex portfolios, all within one financial centre.
Enabling families to achieve their potential will continue to be a priority for DIFC. We will further strengthen the legal, regulatory and institutional environment that gives families the confidence to establish themselves here, while ensuring they have access to the financial expertise, investment opportunities and talent required to grow across generations. In doing so, Dubai will continue to be not only a place where global families manage their wealth, but a place where they establish businesses, invest, innovate and build their future.