Dubai is rapidly growing to become one of the world’s centres of wealth, leading a global financial revolution from state to privatised markets. The Pioneering Future of Finance. In a report launched today by the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), the emirate is seen to be leveraging the unprecedented growth in private wealth and consolidating its role in driving the future of global finance.
Wealth Landscape of the world is changing
According to a report released by the DIFC, it has shown that the private wealth has exceeded 471 trillion around the world. Which, at the same time, has increased eightfold compared to the public wealth since the middle of the 1990s.
Analysts estimate that the transfer of wealth between one generation and the other in the next 20 years would be the biggest wealth transfer in history, because the transfer of wealth among generations is projected to reach 124 trillion in the next 20 years. In the meantime, there is a concentration and downfall of the market.
The U.S. listed companies are half the amount of 1995, and the investors around the world seek higher returns in addition to privately owned asset diversification. The trend has transformed the institutional investors, affluent families, and the asset managers’ approach.
What appeals to Personal Finances?
In the past twenty-five years, the private market has outperformed the governmental standards, with high long-term returns. This liquidity premium of 24 percent has rendered the private equity, private credit, infrastructure, and venture capital highly appealing to investors who can take a longer-term perspective.
The institutional investors currently are using what is currently referred to as the Total Portfolio Approach, where the two, the public and the private assets, combine risks and returns. Beyond this, family offices and extremely affluent individuals are becoming more active in a variety of personal markets, specifically in greener finance, novel-fangled technology transactions, and medical innovation.
Dubai’s Strategic Position
It is because of this world transformation that Dubai has become a natural attraction of prosperity. The regulatory richness of mature markets and the relative speed of an emerging growth market are provided through its financial environment, anchored to the DIFC. Dubai also ranked 12th in the world in the 2025 Global Financial Centres ranking alongside old established centres such as New York, London, and Paris.
More importantly, in 2025, Dubai will experience the greatest net inflow of millionaires in the world, with its projected figure of nearly 9800 high-net-worth individuals set to migrate to the emirate. Dubai now has 81,000 millionaires, among them 237 centimillionaires and 20 billionaires, and this figure is only used to reflect the fact that it is gaining increasing prominence as a wealth centre.
DIFC at the Centre of Growth
The DIFC is the heart of the financial success of Dubai, which has phenomenally expanded over the past few years. The centre had 7,700 registered companies in mid-2025, which is more than a 25-year-on-year growth. These included over 440 wealth and asset management firms, 85 hedge funds, and approximately 1,000 family businesses.
DIFC assets under management increased by 58 per cent in 2024 and have reached about 700 billion. It has been fuelled by both regional and international investors like PIMCO, Cambridge Associates, Naya Capital, Baron Capital and TVM Capital who have established their regional base in Dubai.
To strengthen its role, the DIFC has established special platforms such as the Funds Centre and the Family Wealth Centre, and novel innovative model regulations dealing with the field of private credit and the field of bankruptcy. The measures will be directed to an effective basis of long-term capital and intergenerational wealth stewardship.
Global Attention and Events
In December 2025, the global private capital market platform IPEM announced that in 2026 it will hold its first Middle East sneak preview in Dubai and a full-fledged version event at the Dubai Future Finance Week.
The city’s vision for the long-term, excellent regulation and proactive community of the family office was praised by IPEM CEO Antoine Colson. He used the term the natural home to expand the global private capital network and painted Dubai as the natural choice.
Gradually, the emirate is gaining the image of a place that is in demand in the world. As the world finance turns to private capital, Dubai is not only keeping up with the flow of change, but it is also expecting the second part of the wealth creation and management book.
