Answered plainly
Half the suppliers a setup firm offers to introduce you to were chosen by somebody else before you arrived
Every UAE business setup firm sells its network — banks, auditors, translators, insurers, offices, payment providers.
Every setup firm sells a network, and the word is doing four jobs at once
Read any proposal in this market and somewhere near the end there is a paragraph about relationships. We work with the banks. We will introduce you to an auditor. Our translator, our landlord, our insurance broker, our payment provider. It is the least examined line in the whole document, partly because it sounds like a bonus rather than a charge, and partly because it is genuinely hard to price something nobody has put a number against.
It is not hard once you ask a different question. Not how good is this contact, but who was allowed to decide this in the first place. For some of your suppliers the answer is an authority holding a closed list you must pick from. For others it is a law that licenses the trade and attaches the permission to a named human being. For one of them — the one founders worry about most — the supplier is choosing you, and nobody in your formation chain has a vote. And for the rest, nobody has a veto at all, which is exactly where the introduction is worth least and is most often the one being pushed.
Four situations, one word covering all of them. Separating them takes about ten minutes and changes what you are willing to pay for. How firms in this market are paid, what to ask before signing anything, and what no firm can deliver whatever it charges, is the wider subject of choosing a business setup consultant in Dubai; this page takes one line of the proposal — the network — and puts a price on it.
- Auditor for a DMCC member companyThe firm must appear on the Approved Auditor List at the time of the engagement
- Auditor for a DIFC entityAccepted from the list the DIFC Registrar of Companies keeps
- Corporate agent at RAK ICCAn offshore vehicle is formed through a licensed agent from the published directory
- Company Service Provider in ADGMA non-exempt vehicle appoints a provider holding an ADGM licence
A closed list the authority keeps
- Certified Arabic translatorThe permission belongs to one named individual, for one language pair
- Tax agentThe authorisation number sits against a person, not against a firm
A licensed trade with an open list
- Corporate bank accountNo authority can compel a bank, and no appeal against a refusal was located
The supplier, and it is assessing you
- Fit-out, IT, a website, a marketing agency, a deskNo list and no licence between you and any of them
Nobody at all, an ordinary market
Where the authority keeps a closed list, an introduction buys you nothing
Some of your suppliers are not a market at all. They are a page on the authority's website.
DMCC publishes an Approved Auditor List, and its rules provide that a member company should not engage or renew the engagement of an audit firm to prepare an audit report unless that firm appears on the list at the time of the engagement. DIFC works the same way: an entity required to have its accounts examined appoints an auditor accepted by the Registrar of Companies, from the list the Registrar keeps. If you are forming an offshore vehicle at RAK ICC, the company is formed and maintained through an accredited licensed corporate agent under the Centre's own 2018 regulations for its agents, and the Centre publishes the agent directory. In Abu Dhabi Global Market, a non-exempt vehicle must appoint a Company Service Provider holding an ADGM licence, and ADGM publishes who holds one.
In every one of those cases the sentence "we will introduce you to our auditor" describes a name that is either already on a public list or is not eligible at all. No relationship adds a name to a closed list. What a firm can genuinely do here is narrower and more useful than the offer implies: read the list against your own circumstances, tell you which firms on it actually work at your size, and tell you which ones have a conflict because they also do your bookkeeping. That is advice about a list. It is not access to one.
There is a second reason to care, and it is the one that costs money later. If your consultant's preferred auditor is not on the list your zone keeps, the introduction was worse than useless — it was a false start you paid for in weeks. Check the list first, then take the introduction. The audit obligations themselves, zone by zone, are set out on our audit and accounting page.
Where the trade is licensed but the list is open, the check is a name and never a logo
The second group is larger and it behaves differently. Here the state licenses the profession, publishes who holds a licence, and lets you choose freely among them.
A certified Arabic translation is the clearest case. Under Federal Decree-Law No. 22 of 2022 regulating the translation profession, the permission belongs to an individual translator entered on the Ministry of Justice list and licensed for a specific language pair. A translation house is a shopfront; the stamp on the document is a person's. The practical consequence is that "our translator" means nothing until you have the name and the number, and a house that quietly routes your Russian original to somebody not licensed for it has produced a document the counter will reject. Our legal translation page works through which authority needs Arabic and when.
Auditing and accounting sit in the same shape at federal level, under Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2023, with the Ministry of Economy and Tourism licensing the practice and keeping the roll. Tax advice sits there too: the Federal Tax Authority's public list of Tax Agents carries an authorisation number against a named individual, not against a firm, so a proposal that offers "our tax team" is offering something you cannot check until somebody is named.
| What you are buying | Where the permission is recorded | What it attaches to |
|---|---|---|
| A certified Arabic translation | The Ministry of Justice list, under Federal Decree-Law No. 22 of 2022 | An individual translator, licensed for one specific language pair |
| An audit or accounting engagement | The Ministry of Economy and Tourism roll, under Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2023 | The practice the Ministry has licensed |
| Tax advice | The Federal Tax Authority's public list of Tax Agents | A named individual carrying an authorisation number, never a firm |
So an introduction in this group is worth exactly one thing, and it is a real thing: the firm has worked with this person and can tell you whether they answer email. That is worth something on a bad week. It is not worth a fee, it does not survive the person leaving, and it never replaces checking the name yourself. The full set of public checks is in the checks worth running on a formation consultant.
Where the supplier is assessing you, nobody in the formation chain has a vote
Then there is the bank, and it belongs in its own category because the direction of the decision reverses.
The Central Bank of the UAE licenses banks, finance companies and the related professions, and publishes the list of who holds a licence. It licenses payment businesses too — providing retail payment services in the country requires a licence under the Central Bank's Retail Payment Services and Card Schemes Regulation, which is why the payment gateway a marketplace recommends to you is a supplier with a regulator behind it rather than a plug-in.
What no authority in that structure does is compel any of them to take you on. We looked for a route by which a licensing authority, a free zone or a ministry could require a bank to open an account for a company it had licensed, and for an appeal against a refusal, and found neither. That is a statement about a search rather than about the law, and it is flagged as such below — but it matches what every founder in this market eventually discovers on their own.
Which makes the honest description of a banking introduction narrow. A firm that regularly submits files to a particular institution knows the current documentary expectations, knows which activity descriptions cause questions, and can put your file in front of somebody in a form that person recognises. That genuinely shortens the number of times the file comes back. It does not shorten the decision, and it cannot produce one. Any firm guaranteeing an account is telling you something about its other guarantees — the point is made at greater length in delegating the work does not delegate the liability, and the practical file preparation is on our banking advisory page.
The employment side has a quieter version of the same shape. Under the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation's framework on bank guarantees and the Employees' Protection Insurance Scheme, an employer may satisfy the obligation either by a guarantee from a bank operating in the UAE or by a policy under the Ministry's scheme. The Ministry set the shape of the choice. Your consultant did not.
Where nobody has a veto at all, the introduction is worth least and pushed hardest
Office fit-out, furniture, IT, a website, a marketing agency, a PRO retainer, an HR system, a business centre desk. Ordinary markets, ordinary switching costs, no list and no licence between you and any of them.
Notice the inversion. The stakes are lowest here and the introduction is easiest to make, which is precisely why this is where a referral arrangement is most likely to sit. That is not an accusation; a referral fee is a normal commercial arrangement and disclosing one costs a firm nothing. It is a reason to ask.
Two sentences that price any introduction you are offered
Ask both, by email, before the shortlist rather than after:
Is this supplier on a list I am obliged to choose from, and can you send me the list? If the answer is yes, the introduction is advice about a list and should be priced as advice. If the answer is no, you are in an open market and free to get a second quote without anybody's help.
Are you paid, in any form, if I use them? We have not located published terms from any UAE authority setting out paid referral arrangements between suppliers and formation firms, so this page asserts nothing about how common they are. The question is still cheap to ask, the answer is easy to give in one line, and a non-answer is an answer. Ask it in the same email as the fee breakdown, so the whole picture arrives in writing.
asked by email, before the shortlist rather than after
- Ask both questions by email, before the shortlist rather than afterThe answers arrive in writing, in the same email as the fee breakdown
- Ask for the list, not the nameA recommendation is one name on a page you can read yourself
- Is this supplier on a list I am obliged to choose from
- Yes, and here is the listThe introduction is advice about a list, and should be priced as advice
- No such list appliesAn open market: a second quote is yours to get without anybody's help
- Then ask whether they are paid, in any form, if you use themOne line to answer, and a non-answer is an answer
- Put the introduction on its own line in the quotationAt whatever it is actually worth, including nothing
Where a consultant's introductions genuinely earn their fee
Where the list is long and your position on it is unusual. A closed auditor list with dozens of firms on it is not a decision you can make from the page. Knowing which of them audit companies at your size, in your currency, in your sector, is real knowledge and is not published anywhere.
Where the supplier has to be appointed against a deadline you have already missed. A first audit due in weeks is not the moment to run a procurement exercise.
Where the obstacle is the language of the file rather than the file. A supplier who has read submissions like yours many times over will tell you in one call what an authority will query, which is worth more than the introduction itself.
Where the introduction comes with a warm handover of context. An email that includes your activity line, your ownership chain and your timeline saves you telling the story a fourth time. That is a small, real service, and it is the honest description of most of what this paragraph in a proposal is selling.
What the introduction gives youWhat it cannot buy
- A closed list the authority keepsWhich firms on it work at your size, in your currency, in your sectorA name on the list, and an ineligible pick is a false start you paid for in weeks
- A licensed trade with an open listThe firm has worked with this person and can tell you whether they answer emailA fee's worth: it does not survive the person leaving and replaces no check of your own
- A corporate bank accountThe documentary expectations, and a file in a form the reader recognisesThe decision itself: no authority compels a bank and we located no appeal
- An ordinary market, no list and no licenceA warm handover carrying your activity line, ownership chain and timelineAnything a second quote would not get you, and where a referral fee most likely sits
Where buying the network is the wrong purchase
Where you already have the supplier. An existing auditor, translator or bank that meets the requirement is not improved by being replaced with somebody else's contact. Check eligibility against the relevant list, and if the answer is yes, keep them.
Where the introduction is bundled into a package price and cannot be removed. If a fixed fee includes suppliers you have not chosen, ask for the line to come out. A firm that cannot itemise it is describing an arrangement rather than a service.
Where independence is the point. An auditor introduced by the firm that keeps your books, or an adviser recommended by the party whose work they may one day have to review, has a structural problem no amount of goodwill solves. Investors ask about this. So do lenders.
Where you are being introduced to a supplier in order to reach an outcome nobody controls. A bank account, a specific regulator's approval, a faster queue. There is no relationship in this market that produces those, and buying one costs you the fee and the time.
Where the supplier and the consultant are the same group under two brands. Common, not improper, and worth knowing before you treat the second opinion as a second opinion. Ask which entity in the group holds which licence.
Where the introduction is the reason you stopped looking. The single most expensive version of this is the founder who never got a second quote because one arrived unasked. Two quotes cost an afternoon.
Where holding the relationship keeps you out of your own accounts. If the supplier's file, portal login or correspondence sits with the consultant rather than with you, the introduction created a dependency rather than a service. What that looks like account by account is in the government accounts that are your company.
How to run this on us
We make introductions and we think several of them are worth having. We would rather you priced them accurately than accepted them gratefully.
So: ask us whether a supplier we name is on a list you are obliged to choose from, and we will send you the list rather than the name. Ask whether we are paid if you use them, and we will answer in the same email, in one line. Ask us to put the introduction on its own line in the quotation, at whatever it is actually worth, including nothing. And where you already have an auditor, a translator or a bank that meets the requirement, the useful thing we can do is check their eligibility against the authority's own list and then leave the relationship alone. What we will and will not claim about ourselves is on the about page.
The same test is worth running on the rest of a proposal, not just the network paragraph. The shortcuts this firm refuses to take, and how to check that it keeps to them, are listed under our values.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to use the auditor my consultant recommends?
No. In a zone with a closed list you must use a firm from that list, and your consultant's recommendation is one name on a page you can read yourself. Outside that, the choice is entirely yours and there is no obligation attached to who set the company up.
Can any firm guarantee me a corporate bank account?
No, and the reason is structural rather than a matter of effort. The bank applies its own criteria, no licensing authority can compel it, and we located no appeal against a refusal. A firm can prepare and present the file well, which is a different and checkable claim.
Is a referral commission improper?
Not in itself. It is an ordinary commercial arrangement that becomes a problem only when it is invisible, because then you cannot tell whether the recommendation was about you. Ask, get the answer in writing, and judge the recommendation with the answer in front of you.
My translator was arranged by my setup firm and the document was rejected. Why?
The most common cause is that the certifying translator was not licensed for that language pair, or the stamp belonged to the house rather than to a listed individual. Ask for the translator's name and number before the work is commissioned, not after the counter refuses the file.
The proposal lists the network as a benefit but gives it no price. What should I do?
Ask for it as a separate line, at zero if that is the answer. A benefit with no price is either free, in which case saying so costs nothing, or it is inside the total and you are paying for it without seeing it. The same logic applies to every excluded and implied cost, worked through in what a low-cost licence leaves out.
Begin with a clear conversation
Tell us what you intend to build.
A consultant will map the structure, jurisdiction, approvals and likely cost against what you actually described — not against a package.
