How to Start an Investments Consultancy Business with Meydan Free Zone

Dubai has become one of the places money moves to. That brings a steady stream of people and companies who hold capital and want advice on what to do with it, without handing over control of it.

That is the business activity code 6619.11 describes. You advise on strategy, portfolio construction and asset allocation. You do not manage the money or hold it. This guide covers what the code allows, where its limits sit, who your clients are, how mainland and free zone setup compare, and the steps to get licensed.

Key Stats at a Glance

What This License Covers

Code 6619.11 covers advising clients on investment strategy. In practice that is portfolio construction, asset allocation, family office wealth planning and corporate treasury capital allocation.

The line that defines the activity

You advise. You do not take discretionary control of client capital and you do not hold it. Fund management does both, and it is regulated separately.

If you tell a client where to invest and they decide, you are inside 6619.11. If you decide and move their money yourself, you are not.

What sits outside the code

Two exclusions matter. Insurance agency and brokerage work belongs under activities auxiliary to insurance and pension funding. Managing investment funds belongs under fund management, which needs its own regulatory authorisation.

That boundary is worth getting right at the start, because it decides your license, your compliance load and what you can put in a client contract.

Who Your Clients Will Be

Four segments make up the market, and each wants something different.

High net worth and ultra high net worth individuals

Advice on multi-asset portfolios, allocation into private equity and hedge funds, and cross-border positioning. Relationship-led work, sold on judgement rather than product.

Family offices

Intergenerational wealth planning, succession strategy, and diversified allocation across regions and asset classes. Long engagements, high trust, and the segment with the strongest pull in this market.

Corporate treasury and institutions

Surplus capital allocation, risk-adjusted return targets, and investment policy frameworks for treasuries, foundations and institutional clients. More process, more documentation, longer sales cycles.

Expatriate professionals

Cross-border structuring for people moving to or from the UAE who need to know how their holdings sit across more than one jurisdiction.

Securities-related advice sits under the oversight of the Securities and Commodities Authority, and Dubai and Abu Dhabi both carry established private banking and advisory infrastructure, conventional and Sharia-compliant.

Mainland or Free Zone

Where mainland helps

A mainland license from the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism (DET) gives you the open local market, which matters if you want to advise UAE-registered companies and local corporate treasuries directly.

Where a free zone helps

A Meydan Free Zone license gives full ownership, zero corporate tax on qualifying income and a fully digital setup. For an advisory practice this fits well, because the product is your time and your reports rather than a shopfront.

The Fawri instant license is the quickest route in, and the Meydan Plus package bundles license, visa and support services together.

Let your clients decide it, not the price. Ask who you expect to be invoicing in year two.

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Step by Step Setup Guide

• Step 1, confirm your activity code: Check that 6619.11, Investments Consultancy, is on the Meydan Free Zone approved activity list, and that your intended scope stays inside advisory work.
• Step 2, check your company name: Run a free company name check before you print anything or register a domain. Advisory firms often trade under a partner name, so availability matters.
• Step 3, pick your license and package: A commercial license carrying 6619.11 is the fit. Decide at this point how many visas you need, because that drives the package.
• Step 4, send in your setup documents: Passport copies for every shareholder and director, plus a short description of the advisory work. Setup is digital, so overseas shareholders do not need to fly in for this stage.
• Step 5, collect the license and open a bank account: Banks want a valid license and clean compliance papers. For an advisory firm, be ready to explain clearly how you are paid, because fee-based advice is easier to bank than anything that looks like handling client money.
• Step 6, put your client documentation in place: Engagement letters, scope of advice and disclaimers. This is not a formality in advisory work, it is the thing that defines what you promised.

Compliance and What You Need in Place

No third-party approval

Investments consultancy under 6619.11 needs no third-party approval at Meydan Free Zone, which keeps the licensing path short.

AML duties

This activity is exempt from AML duties in Meydan Free Zone. That is a real saving on internal policy work, though it is worth remembering the exemption attaches to advisory work and not to anything that drifts towards handling client funds.

Staying inside the advisory line

The single biggest compliance risk in this business is scope creep. Take discretionary control or custody of client money and you are in fund management territory, which needs separate authorisation. Write your engagement letters so the boundary is visible to the client.

Securities advice

Where your advice touches securities, the Securities and Commodities Authority is the relevant authority. Check where your specific service sits before you market it.

VAT and books

Register for VAT with the Federal Tax Authority once your taxable turnover passes AED 375,000 a year. Advisory fees reach that line faster than most founders expect, and clean books from the start make renewal and any audit simple.

Market Opportunity

The numbers here are unusually clear. Statista puts UAE financial advisory at USD 186.73 billion in 2025, rising to USD 213.10 billion by 2030, a growth rate of 2.19% a year.

The wider wealth management market already holds around USD 1.2 trillion in assets under management, according to ResearchAndMarkets.

Boston Consulting Group projects UAE financial wealth reaching USD 1 trillion by 2026, up from USD 700 billion in 2021. Wealth arriving that quickly creates advisory demand ahead of local capacity, which is the gap a new consultancy fills.

Three structural drivers sit underneath it. Wealth keeps concentrating here, through inbound high net worth migration and family office formation.

Client needs vary widely, from an expatriate professional structuring across two countries to a treasury team writing an investment policy.

And delivery is changing fast, with UAE wealth management software growing at 16.3% a year through 2033 on Grand View Research numbers, which lets a small firm serve more clients properly.

Cross-border structuring and Sharia-compliant advice are both in rising demand, and both reward specialist knowledge over scale.

Conclusion

Investments consultancy is one of the cleaner financial licenses to hold in Dubai. No third-party approval, exempt from AML duties in Meydan Free Zone, full foreign ownership and a digital setup.

The discipline is in the scope. Keep to advice, keep away from custody and discretionary control, and write engagement letters that say so plainly.

Do that in a market where wealth is arriving faster than advisory capacity, and the demand finds you.

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References

• Statista
• ResearchAndMarkets
• Boston Consulting Group
• Grand View Research
• Securities and Commodities Authority
• Federal Tax Authority