DEWS explained: the DIFC Employee Workplace Savings plan

DEWS, the DIFC Employee Workplace Savings plan, replaced the end-of-service gratuity for DIFC employees from 1 February 2020. Employers pay 5.83% of monthly basic wage into an invested plan for the first five years of service and 8.33% after that. The money is held for you, you choose the funds, and you take the balance when you leave. The investment risk, and the decision about how to invest, now sit with you.

Who is covered by DEWS?

Employees of companies registered in the Dubai International Financial Centre, with some exceptions set out in the DIFC Employment Law. The main exemption is for UAE and GCC nationals who must be registered with the General Pension and Social Security Authority (GPSSA); they receive a state pension instead and are not eligible for a gratuity. A recent amendment to the law requires employers to top up a national’s benefit into a qualifying scheme where the pension contribution falls short of what DEWS would have paid, if the top-up comes to at least AED 1,000 a month.

DEWS is the scheme most DIFC employers use. The law also recognises other qualifying schemes; DIFC lists GO SAVER as the alternative.

How much goes into DEWS?

Article 66(7) of DIFC Employment Law No. 2 of 2019 sets the employer’s contribution as a share of the employee’s monthly basic wage:

The rates mirror the old gratuity: 5.83% of a month’s pay each month is 21 days’ pay a year, and 8.33% is 30 days. Three rules sit around them:

• A floor on basic wage. For contribution purposes, basic wage cannot be set below 50% of the employee’s total monthly wage, which stops a low basic salary from shrinking the benefit.
• A payment deadline. Contributions are due by the 21st of the following month.
• Probation. An employer may defer contributions during probation and pay them retrospectively if employment is confirmed.

Employees can also make voluntary contributions from their own pay, deducted by the employer and invested in the same plan.

On a basic wage of AED 25,000 a month, the employer contribution is about AED 1,458 a month, or AED 17,490 a year, in the first five years, rising to about AED 2,083 a month after that.

How is the money invested?

DIFC’s plan is run by Equiom as master trustee, Zurich Workplace Solutions (Middle East) as administrator and Mercer as investment adviser. Employees choose from a range of funds, and contributions go into a default fund if no choice is made.

According to the administrator’s annual charges summary (data as at February 2026), the default is the “Low / Moderate Growth” option, the Mercer Multi Asset Balanced Growth Fund. The conventional range runs from a US dollar cash fund through diversified growth and balanced options to passive global equity and global bonds, and there is a separate range of Sharia-compliant funds, including Islamic money market, global sukuk and Islamic global equity options.

The default matters because most members never change it. A balanced fund is a reasonable middle ground, but it is not tailored to anyone. Someone thirty years from retirement may want more in equities; someone leaving the DIFC next year may want less. Article 66(15) of the law is explicit that the investment risk on contributions is the employee’s.

What does DEWS cost?

The plan administrator’s charge summaries for February and March 2026 show three fixed charges on every fund, plus the fund’s own costs:

Over a long career, charges compound. As an illustration only, a balance that would grow at 6% a year before charges reaches about 3.21 times its starting value after twenty years with no charges and about 2.51 times with 1.3% a year deducted, a difference of more than a fifth of the final value. The charge is one of the few things in the plan you can see in advance, and it is worth weighing against the alternatives when you leave.

What happened to gratuity earned before February 2020?

Service before 1 February 2020 still earns a gratuity under the old rules, and two details are widely misunderstood.

It is not frozen at your 2020 salary. Article 66 of the DIFC Employment Law freezes the period of service at 31 January 2020, but calculates the gratuity on your basic wage and annual wage at the date employment ends. The formula is 21 days of basic wage for each of the first five years and 30 days for each year after, capped at two times annual wage, with a daily rate of basic wage divided by 365.

It may already have moved. The law allows an employer to transfer the value of that earlier gratuity into DEWS, valued at the basic wage on the date of transfer. If you gave written consent to a transfer, the employer no longer owes the gratuity, and the amount sits in your DEWS account instead.

What can you do with your DEWS balance when you leave?

When you leave your DIFC employer, you can either take the balance as cash without penalty or leave it invested in the plan without further employer contributions, according to the DIFC Courts’ published guidance on the Employment Law. Withdrawals while you are still employed by a DIFC employer are generally not available.

The decision at that point is the same one every expatriate faces with an end-of-service lump sum, and the questions are the same too:

• When will you need the money? If it is for retirement decades away, the balance needs to stay invested somewhere suitable, not sit in cash.
• What will it cost to hold? Compare the DEWS charges above with what the same allocation would cost elsewhere.
• Where are you going next? If you are leaving the UAE, consider the currency you will spend and how your next country taxes investment income.

Our guide to taking a gratuity as a lump sum or investing it works through the trade-offs, and retirement planning in the UAE for expats shows where an end-of-service balance fits in a full plan.

How does DEWS compare with the mainland gratuity?

Mainland employees can work out their statutory entitlement with our UAE gratuity calculator. If your mainland employer has joined the alternative savings scheme under Cabinet Resolution No. 96 of 2023, your position looks much more like DEWS.

A Vault advisor can look at your DEWS allocation, its charges and what the balance should do when you leave, as part of a structured financial plan. Talk to us.

Sources

• DIFC Employment Law No. 2 of 2019, consolidated version, Articles 65 and 66 and Schedule 1 definitions, difc.com.
• DIFC, Qualifying schemes; DIFC press release on DEWS, 8 October 2025.
• Zurich Workplace Solutions (Middle East), DEWS annual charges summaries, conventional and Sharia-compliant investment options, February and March 2026.
• DIFC Courts Pro Bono Programme, FAQs on the DIFC Employment Law.

The charges illustration assumes a constant 6% annual return before charges, for comparison only; it is not a forecast. This article is general information, not personal financial, legal or tax advice. Regulated by the FSRA, and registered in ADGM.