White-label workplace savings administration: what banks should look for

Banks holding fund management licences with extensive corporate client books are entering workplace savings, and most of them do not want to build the back office themselves. The economics of white-label fund administration in the UAE have shifted in the last two years, as Cabinet Resolution No. 96 of 2023 opened a clearer regulatory path for alternative end of service benefits. The banks that already have their licence, fund range and client relationships have all the makings of a scheme except the infrastructure underneath it.

That infrastructure is more involved than it looks from the outside.

What is white-label platform provision in the UAE?

White-label platform provision is an arrangement in which a provider supplies the technology infrastructure for a fund manager to run its scheme operationally, presented under the fund manager's own brand. Ancillary administrative services may also cover employer onboarding, contribution processing, bank reconciliation, investment processing, member portfolios, withdrawals, and reporting and compliance.

Why are UAE banks looking at white-label scheme delivery now?

UAE banks are moving on white-label workplace savings delivery because their corporate clients are asking for it, and because Cabinet Resolution No. 96 of 2023 has made the alternative end of service benefits route operational rather than theoretical. The demand is real. Corporate treasurers with sizeable end of service liabilities want to fund those liabilities properly, and they would rather do it through their existing banking relationship than open a conversation with a new counterparty.

Most banks do not have workplace savings expertise, and building the capability in-house is expensive and takes a significant amount of time before a single contribution file is processed. The white-label route compresses that timeline while drawing on the provider's proficiency.

What should a bank evaluate in a white-label arrangement?

A bank evaluating a white-label workplace savings provider should focus on four things: data residency, operational depth across the full lifecycle, integration surface, and the commercial model.

Data residency in the UAE is not a preference. It is a hard requirement, and it dictates hosting architecture from the first design decision.

Operational depth is where most evaluations underestimate the work. It is straightforward to demonstrate a member portal. It is harder to demonstrate how it delivers a clean daily reconciliation between a corporate contribution account, a custodian settlement account, and a fund manager's trade book, across dozens of employers, with a full audit trail.

Integration surface covers how the provider connects to the core parties and systems. APIs matter when considering the future of workplace savings in the country and the maturity all infrastructure will need to demonstrate.

The commercial model determines whether the arrangement scales. Per-member pricing, per-employer pricing, and asset-based pricing each have different implications for the bank's margin as assets grow.

Where does Cohlay fit?

Cohlay is one option in the consideration set for banks that hold fund management licences and are looking at UAE workplace savings infrastructure. It is DIFC-incorporated, hosted on Azure's UAE regions, and built by practitioners with operating experience inside UAE and DIFC workplace savings. See how the platform works with fund managers.