UAE: markets steady, storms hit
Dubai climbed to 7th in the Global Financial Centres Index and Abu Dhabi's chamber held resilience meetings to shore up supply chains — signals that Gulf markets are doubling down on stability amid regional uncertainty. Meanwhile heavy storms disrupted flights and travel across Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah this week, highlighting the need for real‑time risk modeling for property and business interruption exposures. (prnewswire.com) (mediaoffice.abudhabi) (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
GFCI’s latest edition (GFCI 39) was published on 26 March 2026 and evaluates 120 main financial centres in its March update. (longfinance.net) DIFC’s release accompanying the index highlights sector-level moves — it reports the banking sector ranked 14th while “Finance, Investment Management and Insurance” sit inside the top 10, and cites a policy target to reach the world’s top four financial centres by 2033 under the Dubai Economic Agenda (D33). (difc.com) Abu Dhabi Chamber’s three‑day resilience dialogues involved “more than 80 public and private entities,” including ADDED, ADIO, Khalifa Fund, Abu Dhabi Customs and the Abu Dhabi Quality and Conformity Council, and focused on coordination to keep trade flows and permitting processes uninterrupted. (mediaoffice.abudhabi) Airport and carrier advisories warned of operational disruption through 23–27 March 2026, with Dubai Airports and major carriers such as Emirates and Air Arabia publishing travel alerts and advising passengers to check flight status and allow extra time; airlines also reported reduced schedules and intermittent live-status outages. (gulfnews.com) Industry post‑mortems from the April 2024 Gulf floods provide a scale benchmark for exposure: Guy Carpenter’s later analyses put insured losses for the UAE at roughly $2.9–$3.4 billion (as of mid‑2024 revisions), while Gallagher Re model outputs published for the event estimated UAE property market losses in the $1.8–$2.3 billion range. (guycarp.com) Reinsurers and brokers have since pushed model upgrades — Guy Carpenter published a GCAT UAE flood model and made precipitation/footprint layers available via its GC AdvantagePoint platform to let underwriters and cedents overlay exposures in near‑real time, and academic/industry reviews have similarly urged integrated real‑time urban flood monitoring and forecasting tools. (guycarp.com)
