UAE Federal Decree-Law No. 6 of 2025: what’s changing?

On 8th September 2025, the UAE issued the Federal Decree-Law No. 6 of 2025 (“the New Law”). Its principal objective is to consolidate financial/payment and insurance regulation under one unified legal framework. This will expand the regulatory power of the of the Central Bank of the UAE (“CBUAE”) and remove existing ambiguities.

The New Law repeals:

• Federal Decree-Law No. 14 of 2018 (the prior central bank / financial institutions law);
• Federal Decree-Law No. 48 of 2023 (the insurance regulation law).

The main changes and reforms have been collated in this article.

Expanded regulatory perimeter

The New Law broadens the definition of Licensed Financial Activities to include “Open Finance Services”, “payment services using virtual assets”, insurer and reinsurance businesses and insurance-related professions.

Many fintechs, infrastructure providers, APIs and decentralised platforms (which may have been in regulatory grey zones) are now explicitly brought under the supervision of the CBUAE.

Technology / Enabling Infrastructure Inclusion (Article 62)

Article 62 of the New Law states that entities offering, facilitating or even enabling licensed financial activities—via technology, platforms, protocols or infrastructure—must be licensed and regulated even if they are not themselves banks or insurers.

This is a more forward-looking provision that recognises the growing importance of fintechs: “enablers” cannot hide behind being a pure technology company.

Early Intervention Resolution Regime

The New Law gives CBUAE statutory powers over recovery and resolution. It can intervene early (requiring companies enact capital / liquidity add-ons, structural changes, removal of senior management or forced mergers). The CBUAE can also take steps including bridge institutions, write-downs, liability transfers, stays, moratoria, and overriding certain creditor rights.

This aligns the UAE with international resolution frameworks; the law also sets a creditor hierarchy, and instruments like statutory bail-in.

Digital Dirham and payments framework

The New Law formally recognises “digital currency / digital Dirham” as currency and grants CBUAE exclusive authority over payments systems, digital money, tokenisation, stored value facilities and cross-border payments.

This provides a legal foundation for the CBUAE’s ambitions, clarifies the status of digital Dirham and ensures legal certainty for digital money / tokenised payments.

Insurance business integration

Rather than being regulated under a separate law, insurance, reinsurance and insurance-related activities (brokers, agents, third-party administrators) will be fully integrated into the financial regulation law under CBUAE.

This promotes harmonisation of rules, oversight consistency and cross-sector coordination between banking, payments and insurance.

Enhanced penalties and enforcement

The New Law significantly increases the ceilings for administrative fines (up to AED 1 billion), introduces minimum penalties for unlicensed activity, raises penalties for individuals (Authorised Individuals) and criminalises unlicensed financial activity.

This signals stronger regulatory “teeth” and more of a deterrent role for CBUAE. Entities must allocate compliance resources accordingly.

Transition / grace period

Entities newly brought into scope or those needing to realign will have until 15 September 2026 to do so, subject to extensions at CBUAE’s discretion.

During this period, legacy regulations (from the 2018 Law and 2023 Insurance Law) remain effective – until they are replaced by regulations under the new law.