Plan the money before you need it

In 2026, UAE banks, investors and capital markets all rewarded the companies that arrived prepared. The ones that waited paid more, or went without.

By Sayed A, Chief Business Officer, Graystone Capital

A fit-out contractor has AED 6 million of certified work sitting with a main contractor who pays when it pays. Payroll is due on the 28th. His relationship manager is sympathetic, but the credit team wants two years of audited accounts, and the company has only ever produced management accounts. The facility will take weeks to approve. He needs it in eight days.

What he has is a planning problem that turned into a funding problem. By the time it reaches that stage, the options are fewer and dearer.

My argument is simple. A UAE company needs a funding plan long before it needs funding, because every source of capital in this market takes longer to arrange than the gap it is meant to fill. This year has made that plain.

The ground moved in one quarter

Twelve months ago the backdrop looked easy. The UAE grew 5.8% in 2025, according to the IMF, and the Central Bank cut its base rate to 3.65% in December 2025. The Central Bank’s Q4 2025 credit sentiment survey found banks’ appetite for SME lending at a record high.

Then came the regional escalation earlier this year. In June the Central Bank cut its 2026 growth forecast to 1.7%, from 5.6% a quarter earlier, pointing to weaker trade, tourism and private-sector confidence. On 17 September it raised the base rate to 3.90%, following the US Federal Reserve as the dirham peg requires. Anyone who borrowed on EIBOR-linked terms last year assuming rates only go down is now rewriting the budget.

Official forecasts swung by almost four percentage points in three months. A company whose financing rested on a single growth assumption was running on hope.

Every door opened on a different timetable

PwC’s IPO Watch describes the Middle East IPO market as largely closed since February. Companies that had pencilled in a 2026 listing suddenly needed a bridge.

Debt markets behaved differently. Fitch reports UAE dollar bond and sukuk issuance of $24 billion in the first half of 2026, 40% more than in the second half of 2025. That door stayed open, but mainly for issuers who already had a rating, documentation and investor relationships in place. Nobody builds those in a crisis.

Venture capital was harder still. MAGNiTT data show UAE start-ups raised $895 million in the first half, yet the number of deals fell 37%. Enterprise reports that Series A rounds halved, with founders spending four to six months trying to close. Take a founder who opens Series A talks in January with nine months of runway, expecting to sign by April. On this year’s timetable she signs in July, on tougher terms, after cutting a third of her team. She survives because she started early. Many do not. CB Insights’ 2026 study of 431 failed venture-backed companies found that 70% ran out of capital.

Banks want to lend, to borrowers who are ready

The oddity of the UAE market is that strong bank appetite and SME frustration sit side by side. Central Bank data show SME facilities made up just 9.5% of bank financing to the commercial and industrial sectors in mid-2024. In my experience the gap is less about willingness than readiness.

Most banks will want two to three years of audited statements before extending a meaningful facility. Yet the corporate tax rules only require an audit above AED 50 million of revenue (and for qualifying free zone persons), so thousands of healthy companies below that line have never been audited. You cannot produce three years of audited history in the month you need the loan.

Receivables make it worse. Atradius found that overdue invoices affect 58% of B2B sales in the UAE. A supplier on 50-day terms who is routinely paid a month late is effectively financing his customers for close to three months. That is exactly when he needs a working-capital line, and exactly when a rushed application looks weakest.

Mandatory e-invoicing starts on 1 January 2027 for businesses with revenue of AED 50 million or more, and on 1 July 2027 for the rest. Lenders will increasingly expect invoices, VAT returns, tax filings and bank statements to tell the same story. Clean records will speed approvals. Inconsistent ones will stand out.

What a funding plan actually contains

A funding plan is a working document, updated monthly by the finance team and reviewed by the board every quarter. At minimum it should include:

• A rolling 12- to 24-month cash forecast, with a stress case for slower collections, higher rates and a lost contract.
• Lender-ready financials: audited accounts, reconciled VAT and corporate tax filings, and a clean AECB record for the company and its shareholders.
• Funding matched to purpose: working-capital lines or invoice finance for receivables, term debt for equipment, equity for risk you cannot yet prove.
• Relationships with two or three lenders, built before you need them.
• Covenant headroom, modelled, so you know how far earnings or cash can fall before a breach.
• Trigger points agreed in advance: the runway or cash level at which you draw, raise or cut.

The last item matters most. Deciding in March that you will open a financing process once runway drops below twelve months is easy. Deciding it in October, with payroll looming, is not.

Alternatives are growing. Stride Ventures estimates GCC private debt deployment reached $4.1 billion in 2025, and the Emirates Development Bank runs a credit guarantee scheme with commercial banks. Neither is a shortcut. Private lenders run full diligence and price for risk, and a guarantee still needs a bankable file behind it.

Prepared companies borrow on their own terms

The companies that came through this year in decent shape were rarely the most profitable. They were the ones that signed facilities in 2025, while banks were keen and rates were falling. They kept undrawn lines they never expected to use. And they knew their numbers well enough to tell a credit committee exactly how much they needed and how it would be repaid.

Lenders price your certainty as much as your balance sheet. A funding plan is how you show that certainty before anyone asks for it. Build it now, while you don’t need the money. It is the only time it costs you nothing.