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Foreign Citizens are permitted to own 100% Property Brokerage Businesses in UAE
HLB HAMT Team
Phone:- +971 4 327 7775
Mobile:- +971 55 160 1291
WhatsApp:- +971 56 219 1607
Email:- dubai@hlbhamt.com
The UAE has always been on the frontier of taking on important matters that have a game-changing impact, ultimately benefiting their economic and corporate operations. The real estate sector’s commanding position in the country is set to continue, as property agents will now have full ownership of their firms in the UAE, after the withdrawal of this business activity from the “restricted list.”
The UAE, both at the federal level and in individual emirates, recently revealed the number of commercial activities in which foreign citizens can control 100% of a company and not have a UAE national partner holding a substantial share. However, property brokerage services were still classified as “restricted” and this has now been amended. The Dubai Land Department and RERA are in charge of overseeing all brokerage companies in the UAE, ensuring that rigorous transparency criteria are met.
The UAE property economy is witnessing signs of progress as people upgrade to bigger houses with outdoor amenities amid a remote working and learning trend triggered by the pandemic. The market was toned down due to a three-year oil price slump that began in 2014. Economic aid and government efforts, such as residency permits for seniors and distant workers, as well as the expansion of the 10-year golden visa programme, have also supported in improving the overall sentiment in the nation. Meanwhile, the UAE has also modified its investor visa criteria for property assets, allowing an owner of a Dh750,000 property to get a three-year visa. The previous threshold was Dh1 million for a period of two years.
This revitalizing move will have the greatest influence on Dubai’s real estate market, particularly at a time when buying and selling volume has been stocking up rapidly. As a result, there are bound to be a lot of intriguing discussions inside the realty sector in the coming days.
The real estate markets are always evolving during this challenging business climate, so hiring an expert team to stay up with the pace of change and advise you on many parts of the business are inevitable. To handle the varied requirements and financial risks that come with distinct industries, new techniques must be implemented.
For a long period of time, HLB HAMT has provided services to the real estate and construction industries, and our services are adapted to the needs of our clients. Our team of professionals certifies RERA-mandated regulatory standards and audits escrow accounts.
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RPA Use Case Implementation for Hospitality Industry in the UAE
Vimal Ramachandran, Director
Phone:- +971 4 327 7775
Mobile:- +971 52 830 7998
WhatsApp:- +971 56 219 1607
Email:- dubai@hlbhamt.com
The travel and hospitality industry is going through one of its toughest and most challenging time in history. COVID-19 has changed a lot of scenarios for many industries, the challenges have increased. We at HLB HAMT is helping this industry slowly recover from these bad times by automating a lot of repetitive human tasks. As the industry is slowly getting back the foothold and the need for automation is more than ever before. From the challenge of scaling operations efficiently to meeting timely customer demands & requests to complying with international travel regulations, we help in automating a lot of work that absorbs a lot of your time and effort. We can help you get ahead of your competition by helping you give the appropriate personalized offers for your customers at the best prices.
What do we do?
With the help of our experienced RPA developers in UAE, you can customize and develop BOTS that can help automate a lot of manuals, time-consuming & repetitive high-volume back-office functions such as responding to customer queries, digitizing paperwork, tracking financial transactions, etc. The data from various sources can be used for management insights thus helping to revolutionize guest experiences and eliminate any unwanted errors. Some of the application areas include Room Reservations, Front Desk Operations, Room Service Requests and Billing, Automated Check-In and Check-Out, Online Booking Management, Concierge Recommendations, Cancellation Handling, Loyalty Processing, etc…
What are the Benefits?
RPA in Hospitality: Sample Use Cases
Booking
There will be a lot of queries for a user while booking a particular property, like regarding the amenities, airport pick up and drop, restaurant-related questions, etc. RPA BOTS can be implemented to respond to FAQs, helping your customers get answers while freeing up time for employees to get their operational jobs done. RPA can reply to the customer’s pertinent questions and subsequently provide accurate booking directions in no meantime.
Customer Relationship Management
CRM is another area where RPA can automate some of your constant headaches and offer a swift resolution to your customer’s complaints and disputes. RPA is also useful for automating your bill generation process by coordinating data from your various departments such as restaurants, laundry, spa, transportation, etc. Also, RPA can be used to update customer profiles and close fraudulent accounts and report any suspicious transactions.
Loyalty processing
Loyalty points reward system is a common marketing process that most in the hospitality sector follow. Through RPA, BOTS can be used to process and verify the data of the guests and can be trained to study the behavior trends to design or modify a relevant loyalty program. Also, it can also use to automate existing practices such as keeping check of the loyalty points redemptions, conversions, earnings etc., and to notify the customers about the same. The reward calculations and all will be up to date and error-free which will please your customers.
Competitor Analysis
We all know how fierce and competitive the hospitality industry is, and it is important to know about your competitor inside out in this digital era. With RPA, you can perform this task in a matter of minutes, while earlier it used to take days and months manually. It can analyze the competitor data and even infer your performance level in comparison to them.
Regulatory compliance Reporting and Auditing
RPA can also automate the auditing and compliance reporting process. A lot of time and manual effort can be saved for checking the company’s financial and operational records and prepare audit reports for all legal requirements. Not only these error-free reports are generated through RPA, but they can also be shared with respective authorities for approval processes timely.
Financial Reporting
Invoices, bills, paychecks, vouchers, etc. are essential documents that are important to be processed accurately. RPA can be helpful in generating automated bills for your guest services by integrating data from various departments. Similarly, RPA BOTS can be used to generate finance, HR, Inventory or tax reports with transparent audit trails.
Claims Processing and Handling
It is a tedious process to manually check the invoices, vouchers, bills, claims, etc., some hotels even employed dedicated staff to process the same every month. This process involves a lot of data entry work and a lot of copy-pasting of data from one location to another. With RPA, all of these processes can be automated and can even be programmed based on rule-based engines.
As you can see RPA Bots can be a like-to-like replacement for a lot of humans intervened jobs, which are repetitive and high in volume. By implementing RPA, hotels and the hospitality industry, in general, can save a lot of their processing times, eliminate any errors, and also bring down their operational costs by many folds. Our clients in the hospitality industry have already started reaping the benefits of automation, and more importantly, these streamlined processes are keeping their guests happy and satisfied.
You can reach out to us in case of any queries regarding implementing RPA in the healthcare and tourism industry.
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How is RPA transforming the Healthcare Industry in the UAE?
Midhun Menon P
Phone:- +971 4 327 7775
Mobile:- +971 52 830 7998
WhatsApp:- +971 56 219 1607
Email:- dubai@hlbhamt.com
By 2025, the healthcare sector is going to be one of the most technologically advanced industries in the UAE. At HLB HAMT, we help healthcare institutions digitally transform themselves by automating their patient handling and administrative processes. These days, a lot of emphasis must be given to customer satisfaction, and it is extremely important to provide the best quality service for your patients. We help you with solutions that will adhere to compliances and standards such as ADHICS/NABIDH in this sector. Healthcare firms cannot afford any errors or leakages happening with the patient data. Our developers can design the best possible BOTS to ensure that your focus will be solely on patient interaction.
We also provide RPA solutions in UAE for automating the hospital administration processes. Different daily repetitive manual tasks such as data entry, scheduling appointments, revenue cycle management, executing discharge summary, etc. can be automated in a streamlined manner. In this way, your patients can be treated with more value-based care and at the same time, your internal audits along with sharing of data with third parties can be managed effectively. Another is where BOTS can help is the automation generation of reports such as ROI, KPIs, etc. from various departments.
RPA in Healthcare: Benefits
RPA in Healthcare: Sample Use Cases
Here are a few of the sample use cases we have done in the healthcare sector.
Improving the Healthcare Cycle
The data handled by hospitals, be it their personal info or treatment details, are huge and with the help of RPA, the administrators can extract & optimize such data more efficiently. RPA can help convert these data to valuable management and medical insights to provide better treatment and diagnose diseases more accurately
Scheduling new patient Appointments
One of the bottlenecks of healthcare administration is scheduling new patient appointments. With the help of RPA Bots, the incoming patient data can be scanned, developed into a condensed report, and also queue the appointment request accordingly based on the parameters such as diagnosis, past history, and location. This can lead to quick processing and ultimately increase patient satisfaction.
Simplifying Claims Processing
Claims processing involves numerous time-consuming steps such as data input, scrutinization & evaluation, and approval. With the help of RPA bots, hospital management can streamline the entire claims process and get error-free output in ultra-quick time. The revenue recovery process can also be automated with the help of RPA.
Improved Financial Management
Financial operations require high human effort and time. Invoices, bills, paychecks, vouchers, etc. are essential documents that are important to be processed accurately. RPA can be helpful in generating automated bills for in-patient services by integrating data from various departments. Similarly, invoice data from purchase departments can be integrated to improve the cash flow and reduce the chance of any fraud.
Help Centers
Automating the patient contact touchpoints where the staff would not have to spend time interacting with the incoming help requests. Instead, RPA Bots can execute requests from the patients and do all necessary follow-ups. In this COVID scenario, this facility can be helpful to automatically book the PCR tests and to resolve any query related to your services and facilities. The BOTS can also be used for timely follow-ups with the enquirer.
Inventory & supply chain management
RPA can help update and communicate inventory levels, providing constant visibility, eliminating reporting errors, and ensuring optimal levels of critical medical supplies. RPA can help supply chain managers track the inventory required in a hospital, such as gloves, needles, syringes, medicines, or PPE kits by notifying them about changes in demand and supply patterns.
We’re merely at the tip of the iceberg in terms of how RPA can benefit healthcare institutions, be it small clinics or big hospitals. Things will change a lot once healthcare experts get to know its capabilities better and how the learnings can be used to improve for more refinement of their processes. Clearly, RPA is a perfect tool to help hospitals face fresh demands from the healthcare world. Times are certainly changing, identification and prioritization of various processes to automate are extremely important.
Why wait? Select the best RPA partner and automate your various workflows. Call our experts for more on how RPA can help the healthcare industry reduce operating costs and increase productivity.
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RPA Implementation in UAE’s Banking Sector
Midhun Menon P
Phone:- +971 4 327 7775
Mobile:- +971 52 830 7998
WhatsApp:- +971 56 219 1607
Email:- dubai@hlbhamt.com
We live in an age of digital interconnectivity, and it is no surprise that most banks in UAE are opting for or already undergone digital transformation. According to KPMG, top UAE banks have shown good performances in the past few years and have recorded a growth of nearly 14% in net profit. A good chunk of appreciation must be given to these banks who have used digital technology to expand their business to new horizons. Another major factor to this sudden change is the rising expectation level of customers, gone are the days where customers spend hours in a queue in front of a bank. Today’s customers want everything in 5G speed and more importantly, it is all about convenience and ambiance a bank provides. This trend is seen globally, from rising economies like India to developed economies like the U.K or the U.S. Here at HLB HAMT, we provide customized RPA solutions in UAE to automate numerous banking procedures that require human time and effort.
What are the current issues facing the Banking Industry?
Time, as they say waits for none. If you ask me what the most precious entity in the universe is, it is time! Most banks face the issue of spending too much time on processes with apparently less returns, and sometimes, I do agree that some processes are extremely crucial and thereby takes more time. For e.g., mortgage loan processing and all takes a lot of time to validate and execute. So time-consuming processes are one of the issues faced by the banks. Moreover, banking Is one sector which required highly experienced resources. A small error can have big repercussions in a bank’s reputation. The risk of data security and data leakage in the manual loan approval processes is also a challenge for many banks in UAE. With strict laws and compliances like NESA, data privacy and security should be given at most importance. Any man-made errors or non-compliant features can result in heavy fines and lawsuits against the bank.
What is RPA and why it is in trending among banks and other financial institutions in the UAE?
Robotic Process Automation or RPA is a proven technology, especially in finance and accounting verticals. Being a combination of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms, RPA allows you to focus on important, higher-value work while automating high-level manual process flows. In a research conducted by Gartner, global spending on RPA across industries is expected to reach $2.4 billion in 2022! Another benefit of implementing RPA is it almost eliminates human errors in high-risk actions and thereby reducing operational risks by a great volume. Based on a PwC study, almost 80% of CEOs of leading banks are concerned about the rapid pace the technology is evolving per day in this sector and most of them feel RPA can be the tool that helps them keep up with the rising case of security risks associated with the same.
Many would-be having a doubt, how a programmed BOT can replace a human user, but RPA does just that, it can mimic human actions and can interact with a website, mobile app, or any software. The BOTS can be 100% customized according to each requirement and can automate a broad range of tasks to fit your needs. Besides AI-based BOTS never sleeps and can operate 24*7 leading to an increase in overall productivity.
Though we would be discussing later how RPA transform banking operations in detail, let me throw some light on its advantages for banking industry in a nutshell. Studies have suggested that banks that implemented RPA reduced up to 90% of their loan processing time and the approval process was faster by 50%. BOTS can extract the needed data easily and verify all required documents quickly. The KYC verification process also can be done easily and paperless. The labor costs can be reduced in the process. The turnaround time has reduced from days to hours and in some cases even seconds!!! The transformation of information from a legacy system to a modern cloud-based one can be done easily through RPA based solutions.
Banks in UAE, especially in Dubai are adopting RPA on a large scale for automating repetitive tasks such as customer support, loan processing, and account portability sections. On an average, these BOTS do close two 2 million transactions in a day. Another area which has seen drastic improvement is ATM cash disbursal, where earlier the time taken was close to 12 hours and now it is just under four hours!!! And it is not only middle east banks which are in the forefront, major banks such as Deutsche and HSBC have recently been in news of successfully implementing RPA in their business processes.
The concept of Digital Workers in the Banking Sector
As said earlier, the AI-powered BOTS can help banks be competitive and cut their operational expenditures to a large extent. The concept of Digital Worker has already been implemented successfully in other industries such as logistics and healthcare. To define, a digital worker is a virtual employee made up of AI, ML, RPA and analytics to carry out regular human tasks with 100% accuracy and in double-quick time. I believe this concept will catch up with other industries as well and in future, we will have more digital workers in every sector.
The digital worker in banking sector can automate lot of repetitive banking activities such as responding to customer queries, organize bank statements, handle incoming enquiries, process payroll slips, etc. The concept of a digital worker is such that it can integrate with any system or any platform and can be completely built to suit your process and business structure. The routine and mundane front and back-office tasks can be done by the digital worker, benefitting all stakeholders on one go.
Digital Worker for UAE banks: Use Cases
I am going to touch upon some time-consuming and repetitive procedures among the UAE banks that can be automated with the help of RPA. HLB HAMT is already providing most of these services to the leading banks in the region.
Inbound enquiry management
Credit Assistant
The credit related enquiries from customers through web-based medium such as chat, email and through website is interpreted accordingly by BOTS. The enquiries are categorized based on the eligibility and loan type. Pre-programmed BOTS will have rule engine defining each action course. The BOTS can verify a customer’s identity by scanning through the data bank and can even archive related documents required for sanctioning the loan. BOTS can also send request for additional info and send appropriate replies to the enquirer.
Accountant
BOTS here are programmed for enquires related to accounting functionalities, tax payments, VAT in case of UAE, etc. Again, the inbound enquires are categorized based on the type and action courses are defined. BOTS can retrieve financial data, updating accounting receivables etc. and check accuracy of the financial records. All the corresponding follow ups and proper reply to the enquirer will be done accordingly. Another BOTS activity is creation of analytical reports for management reference.
Customer Service
Thousands of enquiries come to a bank each day be it on chat, email, website, and even through CRM systems. As a human it is difficult to interpret the content and do the response accordingly. BOTS can help in the same by dividing the enquiries based on its type and following it up with relevant information. In a survey conducted by Accenture back in 2016, more than 70% respondents from the banking sector believes that RPA can be a big influential factor in enforcing compliance in the future.
Account Initiation & Closure Process
Usually there are number of documents to be processed during both account initiation and closure process. These documents can be both from the client-side or from the bank side. Sometimes, accounts will be forcefully closed due to a lot of reasons. Manually handling all this can be a tedious process. With RPA in place, banks can run a checklist of documents to be verified before an account initiation and closure. Notifications can be sent automatically via this process.
Risk and Compliance Management
Since it deals with lot of monetary transactions, there are extremely complex regulations and compliances to be met that deals with customer data privacy and security. Also, the risk associated with tighter deadlines, are bit too much headache for the banks. Reporting becomes a constant repetitive entity that is unavoidable. Moreover, these regulatory parameters change often making the manual work even more complex. RPA can help automate these manual reporting procedures and BOTS can be easily fed with regulatory requirement changes.
Tracking & Managing Accounts Payable
One of the most monotonous processes in banking sector, is accounts payable. It is a less complex procedure but has lot of data extraction and validation steps which is highly time-consuming and requires complete control and overseeing. Based on our experience, our clients across Dubai and other emirates have chosen accounts payable as a priority simple because it does not require a complex intelligence engine and can implement quickly.
We have designed this with the help of an OCR based solution where our document processing software can read information from the scanned copy of the file and RPA will do the rest of the process such as evaluating the information and send reminders if necessary. There is also manual intervention possible whenever necessary.
Processing Credit Card Applications
I still remember few years ago, it used to take more than 10-15 days, sometimes even a month for us to get the credit card approval from the bank. Obviously, this leads to a lot of frustration among the applicants, and some may even cancel the card altogether. What the normal manual process takes in weeks, RPA can do it within a matter of hours. All necessary validation checks or credit score checks can be conducted in the background and the system can arrive at a decision whether to go ahead with the card issue or not.
Processing Mortgage Loans
Loan processing is an extremely vital entity in a bank’s day to day functionality. Usually, this process, especially that of mortgage loans are extremely time-consuming. With a set rule engine, RPA can handle these processes hassle free. HLB HAMT has helped banks automate their loan initiation, KYC document processing, background checks like repayment history, employment verification etc. through RPA BOTS. Hence, the loans could be approved or disapproved swiftly. Another advantage of RPA in mortgage loan processing is that you can reallocate lot of your staffs to higher-value tasks.
Detecting Fraudulent Activities
HLB HAMT has its own forensic and fraud investigation wing where we help UAE-based banks track all dubious transactions and pinpoint on the fraudulent ones. We achieve this by using RPA by analyzing transaction patterns and having a quick responsive action against such grey accounts by either stopping the transaction or blocking that account altogether.
KYC Processing
These days, Know Your Customer, abbreviated as KYC is a norm for every financial institution. There are several mandatory checks regarding every customer. Validation of each parameter is a tedious manual job and something Banks usually spend a lot of money on. Accuracy is also an issue with these manual checks. With RPA, not only Banks can get the data validated in ultra-quick time, but they can also reduce the errors to almost nil.
Extracting Data from Legacy Systems
These data might be stored in multiple system across locations, the more the systems, the more there is a chance for errors to creep in manual systems. Our expertise team of RPA developers have developed systems to extract data from multiple systems including legacy ones. It is extremely important to process the data in any format and RPA does have that ability.
Generating Reports & Analytics Dashboard
All banks maintain a general ledger with all important data such as bank’s date-wise financial statements, assets, liabilities & revenue details, etc. Out of the reports created from such documents, some might be publicly accessible such as for company shareholders and media, and some might be of confidential nature. A small mistake in any of the report generation could spoil the bank’s reputation big time. RPA systems generally use report templates to create reports quicker and without any errors. Using the data, RPA systems can also create an analytics dashboard with all important information for top management people.
I have just discussed the most frequent Digital Worker use cases we implement for banks in the middle east region. There are many other use cases which can automated with the help of RPA BOTS. With the pandemic still hovering around us, it is wise as well to keep human contact to the minimum and reduce any bottlenecks in the bank’s daily processes. I believe as AI and ML algorithms evolve over time; we would be seeing more innovative RPA tools from the HLB HAMT team in the future. Its no wonder that Industry leaders have adopted RPA with open hands, and reports from renowned industry leaders say that by 2025, almost all banks will adopt RPA based Digital Workers in their day-to-day activities. RPA is here to stay, and probably stay for a long time.
If you are looking to implement any one of the above use cases or if you want to try out any innovative use cases, do write to us. Our experts will be in touch with you soon.
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The Impact of RPA in Insurance Industries in UAE
Vimal Ramachandran, Director
Phone:- +971 4 327 7775
Mobile:- +971 52 830 7998
WhatsApp:- +971 56 219 1607
Email:- dubai@hlbhamt.com
Robotic Process Automation has been helpful in transforming many industries in the last few years. The automation of mundane and repetitive human tasks has helped companies to focus their employee’s energy on high-value tasks. Insurance firms, which handle a large amount of data, can be a perfect use case for the RPA implementation. The scope of AI-powered robotic bots and the concept of digital worker is gaining extreme significance among the leaders of Insurance firms. This is mainly due to the presence of monotonous & time-consuming manual jobs which inversely affect the delivery process and lead to customer dissatisfaction. In this article, I will be talking about our experience with implementing RPA at leading insurance firms in the UAE. Routine operation tasks are automated and has led companies to be more efficient and customer-centric.
What were the existing bottlenecks for RPA implementation in the Insurance industry?
RPA can streamline the data processing and make it much faster and error-free. The first question when an insurance firm decide to do RPA is where to start? What are the major time-consuming jobs? Where does company can save the operational costs the maximum and increase productivity? And most importantly which all processes are subjected to maximum human errors? At HLB HAMT, our experienced RPA consultants can help you in choosing the right service to automate. This involves many steps such as meeting all stakeholders, auditing your current processes, etc.
Another bottleneck is the overdependency on data from legacy systems. This data might be inside these systems for years, and sometimes decades. One of the biggest advantages of RPA systems is that it can interact with any data formats. This can help deal in cutting human expenditures caused due to system updates. Besides, if you decide to migrate from legacy systems, our cloud transformation service can be of help anytime.
Most companies will be lacking the skillset and training for handling RPA systems. This is one of the reasons why many companies refrain themselves from opting for new technologies. But RPA is one technology that does not require any special skillset or infrastructure. Yes, there are certain processes you should adopt but any layman can understand the same with ease.
The fourth bottleneck in my opinion, and this is the most crucial part of an RPA adoption in UAE is to overcome the reluctancy towards change management. Most people will be comfortable in a cocoon shell that they have been following for years. At each stage of the RPA implementation, proper training, documentation, and awareness programs will be conducted to all employees to make them comfortable with the new scenarios.
RPA in Insurance: Present & Future Use Cases
COVID-19 has changed a lot of scenarios for the insurance industry, especially now with lot of employees working from home, handling high volumes of transactions online has become a challenge. Although many insurance companies have opted for RPA and digital transformation even prior to the pandemic, the process got accelerated the adopted volume and particularly RPA being expanded to several use cases. Although it is a known fact that RPA can increase turnaround time, increase accuracy & efficiency, from our experience RPA can be perfect for risk predictions and connecting with the end customer. There is no doubt that RPA can revolutionize the insurance industry creating a lot of high-value jobs for the employees.
With HLB HAMT, you can automate lot of your lengthy and mundane daily chores through RPA. As you might know RPA uses a combination of Machine Language & Artificial Intelligence and can automate a large chunk of repetitive human tasks and that too in a very short time.
Let us look at few of the cases we have automated with RPA for our insurance industry clients in UAE.
Handling Claims Processing
One of the most frequent yet time-consuming tasks in the insurance field is the claim processing one. Employees usually must collect information about the client including their documents and this may involve getting data from multiple systems. Usually, this takes a lot of time and the delay can frustrate the end customer. Insurance is one are where no one like to wait as in most cases it will be an emergency request. Such collection of large quantities of data from various systems can be performed easily by the RPA. Moreover, it can handle many claims at once, something which is clearly not possible with manual procession. The evolution of AI is making these process more accurate and clients are enjoying quick responses to their claims. Not only data collection and extraction, but RPA can also be helpful in error tracking, verification of claims, integration with third-party data resources, etc.
Handling Policy Administration
All the existing policy administrative systems in the UAE are of legacy types and are costly to maintain. There are a lot of policy administrative functions, like quotation, rating, underwriting and customer care which can take lot of your operation time and manhours. The industry is ever so changing and the expectation of each customer varies. With RPA all administrative activities such as risk capture, credit controlling, settling accounts, taxations, etc. can be done quickly and more importantly in an error-free manner.
Managing Policy Cancellation
Personally, I have found this process to be extremely time-consuming and frustrating with insurance companies. If you look at the back end, there are hundreds of processes happening, from a host of emails, tallying cancellation & inception dates, checking policy terms, interactions with admin and CRM systems, etc. The time taken for the lookup is the sole reason of the delay, with RPA, Insurance companies can speed up this process as the checking happens in a swift second across systems and if everything is correct, can go ahead with the policy cancellation. From our experience, we can say that, our clients now handle a cancellation request with just one-third of the time comparing to the pre-RPA scenario.
Automating Underwriting
Evaluating the risks associated with insuring people and assets has always the issue of your client data getting exposed. Again, we are talking about a large substantial amount of data here. Usually from our interaction with our clients, this is a lengthy process and can take anywhere between two to three weeks on an average to complete this process. The process involves assessing the risk via information from multiple sources, scrambling & analyzing of data, etc. With the help of RPA, data collection process from all types of sources is quick and with the help of AI, all relevant information corresponding to a particular policy are put forward and a report can be generated. This report can contain all necessary info and recommendations.
Ensuring Compliance
Dubai and other Emirates are extremely vigilant and provides strict guidelines for the insurance sector in terms of data privacy and security. The laws get updated at a very quick pace and it is important for the insurance firms to stay par with all the updates. Any noncompliance with the privacy laws, can result in hefty fines and other legal consequences. Manual works can be error-prone, especially, in the case of work documentation, audit trail creations, the chances of error creeping are multifold. With RPA, the BOTS can be pre-programmed with all necessary compliances, therefore, saving a lot of manual time in due process. Regular jobs such as customer information validation, report generation, sending notification alerts, etc. can be automated via RPA.
Performance Measurement
The first thing that many decision-makers of leading insurance firms tell us is that they are not able to get accurate and centralized information from the ground level of operations. Lot of manual works might not be recordical and is difficult to keep a track on for a quantifiable measuring index of the overall efficiency. This is mainly due to the numerous paperwork one must scrutinize to have that measurement in place. With RPA, it is easy to track as all the tasks conducted by BOTS are logged properly. The overall areas which need improvement can be found out with the help of these audit trails. Moreover, the data collected from all the levels can be centralized and converted into a dashboard for better analyzing.
Miscellaneous Functions
Apart from the above functions, RPA can reduce around 40% of time in form registration process in insurance companies, can automate legal and credit checks along with creating sales scorecards and sending notification alerts to agents. With well-programmed BOTS, one can automate finance and accounts functionalities such as bank reconciliations and register transactional expenses.
As I had mentioned earlier, there will be a lot of companies relying heavily on legacy ERP or CRM apps. What RPA can do is easily integrate with these legacy systems and create a similar workflow as a manual one.
Future technologies trending in UAE
Our in-house RPA developers are adding more features everyday into the already impressive RPA solutions roster for Insurance industry. Recently, we did a solution based on image classification technology for settling claims and an OCR-based text extraction for handling customer policy extensions. The advent of blockchain-based technologies will increase data security by many folds along with RPA.
We at HLB HAMT believe RPA is “the” most perfectly fit technology for the insurance industry as we can automate end-to-end processes easily. Moreover, BOTS can never be tired, and be able to work 24*7 without a drop in accuracy is also a welcome thought. The daily chores and processes can be standardized which can lead to an increase in operational efficiency. The whole RPA installation processes hardly take any time and can work in sync with your existing IT infrastructure. Our expert consultants can train your team regarding how RPA application works in a matter of a couple of hours.
Again, as I mentioned in the beginning, change management is something that must be seriously looked at. I agree it will be difficult for the employees to embrace a new technology initially, but guess, once they start using RPA, they would realize that they can use their skill for higher-value jobs in the company. Moreover, all this process automation can reduce the wait times and keep the end customer happy, and keeping your customer happy means, good times for your company!!!
For any information related to installing RPA in Insurance industry, get in touch with our experts!!!
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5 Stages of RPA Implementation in UAE: A Walkthrough
Midhun Menon P
Phone:- +971 4 327 7775
Mobile:- +971 52 830 7998
WhatsApp:- +971 56 219 1607
Email:- dubai@hlbhamt.com
In these tough times, more and more companies are taking harsh measures to reduce their operational costs through increasing their productivity and managing their employee’s time for better purposes. Among the various tools used, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the most sort after one, simply because it saves lot of work hours for the company. One issue that many companies face while implementing RPA are the various obstacles and challenges that awaits them as road blockers. These challenges may be mostly internal including “resistance to change”, adjusting to the new pace of work, the automation anxieties, and a lot more. The key for any RPA success is overcoming these challenges through proper planning and execution of the implementation processes. With an experienced RPA solution vendor in UAE like HLB HAMT, you can achieve this easily. In this blog, I am going to throw some tips and tricks on how to approach an RPA implementation in five different stages.
Stage 1 – Assessing Opportunities
The infancy stage of any RPA project is its most crucial time, the main action items of this stage include conducting a high-level assessment of the areas which will benefit the most by switching to RPA. Automating each and everything will be difficult, and it is important to pick the potentially viable processes. Mostly, repeated manual processes which is extremely human driven and time consuming will be given more weightage. It is also important to create a weightage matrix Developing an exact timeline of the project and who all are the stakeholders, along with their roles and responsibilities will be determined. A rough implementation plan is created along with set project objectives. This plan will help in giving guidance and strategic direction to all concerned parties and addresses any potential risks and concerns associated with the project.
Stage 2 – Finalizing Use Cases
Next up, is to select the best use cases out of the probable ones. For most companies, this is the most important phase as it could make or break an initiative. There are lot of factors on selecting the final use cases, and there will be a lot of QA sessions between all concerned parties. One of the first procedures of selecting a use case is how much documented and predictable the procedure is, no company would like to have a complex procedure to automate first up. Most will prefer a stable and predictable procedure with low complexity. Most companies from our experience opt for processes that can be evaluated in monetary terms such as measurable savings, and ones that give generally a faster ROI. Once, it is finalized, all technology requirements, systems etc. are chalked out to support the whole initiative.
Stage 3 – Create BOTs, Piloting & Implementation
Okay, the use cases are decided, now one must prepare and execute the selected ones. BOTs are programmed for the selected use cases. All your workforce is trained adequately to execute the plan of implementation. The Quality Assurance time should be ready with their test cases. The complete process should be documented properly for future reference purposes. In the piloting phase, end-to end automation is full-fledgy tested. Based on the feedback from the QA team and other stakeholders, modifications are made to the Bot programming and a readiness assessment document is prepared if all is clear for the final implementation. The benefit model is finalized, and the RPA solution is all set to go live.
Stage 4 – RPA Lifecycle Management
In this phase, the launching of the RPA solution takes place. But things do not end just with the release of the production version. A series of training and feedback sessions should be conducted between the end users and administrators to make sure everything is on track. The organizational and operational impacts of this solution should be educated well across all stakeholders. Next up is the creation of a Centre of Excellence (COE) and A strategic model is designed for governing and proactive maintenance of the solution. COE helps in providing administrative support and also in maintaining and handling of RPA bots and other related activities. The change management, communication, and upgrade plans are also defined accordingly.
Stage 5 – Performance Analysis
Most people think that putting all the plans in place and executing it to perfection completes the job cycle of an RPA implementation. But, as the world is changing rapidly fast, you must have the hold and measure of the performance of your solution at regular intervals. The output accuracy and error reduction should be measured, along with the performance consistency. The workforce productivity also should be measured accordingly. The compliance to local regulations like NESA, ADHICS, etc. should be ensured along with international compliances such as GDPR. Above all, the satisfaction of your employees and clients should be something you shade probably take a note of, after all, these are the small things that can help make your business flourish.
Conclusion
RPA, as you might already notices can bring in great changes to your business processes, but it is extremely important to take a proper path and execute a smart implementation strategy to utilize its full potential. With proven expertise and approach in handling RPA solutions, HLB HAMT can perform smooth and smart RPA solution implementation that will simplify your complex organizational problems and make the life of all stakeholders much easier.
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Doing Business in UAE
Jay Krishnan, Partner
Phone:- +971 4 327 7775
Mobile:- +971 55 160 1291
WhatsApp:- +971 56 219 1607
Email:- dubai@hlbhamt.com
UAE is one of the most promising and stable countries in the Arab world that has experienced substantial expansion over the last few years. The current status the UAE enjoys today as a leading commercial and trading hub is the result of years of hard work and dedication and its willingness to adopt innovative technologies.
The government has been implementing various strategies to promote technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain, that helps shape the future and society. The massive investments UAE has made in these fields prove the country’s appetite for digital transformation. According to reports, AI is estimated to contribute $9.6 billion to the UAE economy by 2030— nearly 13.6 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
COUNTRY PROFILE
GEOGRAPHY
UAE spreads over an area of 83,000 sq km, along the south-eastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. Abu Dhabi, the federal capital of UAE, also happens to be the largest emirate, accounting for 87 percent of UAE’s total area.
The contrasting landscapes of UAE is a feast for the eyes, be it the sandy deserts, giant dunes, spectacular oases or the awe-inspiring mountains.
The size of the country might be small, but when it comes to regional and international affairs, UAE’s role is noteworthy.
POPULATION
There has been a notable increase in the population of the country over the past few years; from 4.1 million in 2005 to roughly 9.5 million in 2018.
Out of the 22 countries in the Middle East, UAE has the most diverse population. The country’s rapid growth in various economic sectors and the high standard of living has been luring expatriates from every part of the world to UAE. Expatriate workers form the majority of the population (88.5%) and UAE citizens form the minority (11.5%). The largest group of non-UAE nationals are South Asians, Egyptians and Filipinos.
GOVERNMENT
The operations of the UAE government are distributed between the federal government and the local governments of each emirate. The Cabinet of the United Arab Emirates is the chief executive body of the country and it consists of Prime Minister, two deputy prime ministers, the ministers of the UAE, and an active General Secretariat.
According to convention, the ruler of Abu Dhabi is the President of the UAE and the ruler of Dubai is the Prime Minister of the UAE.
BUSINESS CUSTOMS
The UAE gives great importance to personal relationships and mutual trust, while conducting businesses. Emirati people usually prefer to conduct business with familiar people; hence having someone introduce you will prove to be beneficial in your business relationship.
The working week in UAE starts on Sunday and the official weekend is on Friday and Saturday. Some smaller private companies close only on Friday.
Government offices open at 7.30 a.m. and close at 3.00 p.m. Private offices function for longer duration and either adopt straight shift or split shift.
LAWS
The country has issued a number of laws related to the economy, trade and investment since its formation in 1971. There are many local laws pertaining to alcohol consumption, dressing, public displays of affection, etc. in the UAE. Expats should be aware of these as ignorance of the law will not be considered or accepted as an excuse in court and breaking the law will get you into legal trouble.
Some of the major laws are Commercial Companies Law, bankruptcy law, labor law, Anti-Money Laundering law and tax laws.
UAE is one of the fastest growing economies in the world and the second largest in the Arab world. GDP of the economy which stood at $382.58 Billion in 2017 is projected to trend around $425.00 Billion by the year 2020. The economy of UAE has grown by nearly 231 times, since its independence in 1971.
“UAE is the best example how visionary leaders can transform a country. UAE transformed to a world class investment destination by moving away from its early dependence on natural resources like Oil and Gas. The government’s bold decision to welcome foreign investments in property, tourism and technology lead to an unprecedented growth in UAE economy. HLB HAMT was fortunate to witness and serve the business environment in UAE in the form of consultancy and various other forms of professional services, in line with the vision of the rulers of the UAE’, says Mr. John Varghese, Founder and Managing Partner of HLB HAMT.
The UAE government is continuously adopting forward-looking changes to make the environment even more stable and sustainable for the expat population to thrive in this country.
There are numerous factors that have helped in uplifting UAE’s position as a significant regional and international business player;
Strategic Location
UAE is strategically located at the crossroads of Asia, Europe, Africa and the CIS countries and it offers ready access to clients and customers in the neighboring regions.
Efficient trade policy
The UAE has a liberal trade system as it follows an exports diversification policy, wherein the country exports a wide variety of products and does not rely on a single commodity.
UAE has trade agreements with numerous countries which includes partner countries in the GCC as well. The country has been a member of World Trade Organization since 10 April 1996 and a member of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade since 8 March 1994.
Favorable government policies
The UAE has a business-friendly environment and world class infrastructure, which is evident from the increase in the number of international companies establishing their base in the country.
Economic Diversification
The UAE pursues a strategy of diversification and sees to it that an optimal balance is maintained between various sectors. Even though oil production is the biggest source of revenue, in 2015, only 30 percent of UAE’s GDP came from oil production, the rest 70 came from non-oil sectors such as media, telecom, tourism, manufacturing and commercial aviation. UAE has bagged the first spot among the Arab countries and 11th globally, in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business 2019 report.The country’s reforms related to ease of starting business, getting electricity, registering real estate and gaining access to credit, have helped it climb 10 spots. Overall, the UAE is far ahead of its GCC peers in global ranking.
UAE has been luring investors from across the globe with its attractive features, that are:
Flexibility to do business in any part of the country
Less restrictions on the number of visas
More business activities available for licensing
No business or personal taxes
In UAE, a company can be formed in any of the following three jurisdictions:
A mainland company is an onshore company licensed by the Department of Economic Development (DED) of the related emirate. The companies registered in the UAE mainland can do business in the local market as well as outside UAE without any restriction.
Free zones are areas that have a special tax, customs and imports regime and are governed by their own framework of regulations.
An offshore company is a legal business entity that operates outside its registered jurisdiction for the purpose of legally minimizing tax payment.
COMPLETE FOREIGN OWNERSHIP
Non-UAE nationals seeking to establish an entity in UAE mainland need to team up with a UAE national:
In case of a Limited Liability Company (L.L.C) with commercial activities, the UAE national will own 51 percent of shares and the non-UAE national will own the remaining 49 percent shares.
But of late, the UAE government has announced a new law that will permit complete foreign ownership in certain sectors selected by the government. Foreign investors can get complete control over 122 economic activities across 13 sectors.
The sectors include renewable energy, space, agriculture, manufacturing, transport, storage and many more. The production of solar panels, power transformers, green technology, and hybrid power plant, e-commerce transport, supply chain, logistics, and cold storage for pharmaceutical products are some of the activities included in the project.
Other areas of ownership by foreign investors include hospitality and food services, information and communications, professional, scientific and technical activities, administrative services, support services, educational activities, healthcare, art and entertainment, and construction.
The new law does not apply to free zones and offshores where 100% foreign ownership is already permitted.
In case of any other entity (primarily meant for all Companies with professional category licenses), the UAE nationals will be acting as a Local Service Agent (LSA), wherein the shares of the company will be fully owned by the ex-patriate shareholder and the UAE national will act as an agent for local contact purpose. However, all the business responsibilities and risks will be vested with the expatriate shareholder.
TRADE LICENSE
To conduct any form of business in the UAE, one must acquire a trade license. The UAE economic department is the liaising authority that issues trade licenses and the procedures of licensing vary from one emirate to another. Licenses in UAE can be divided into three;
Commercial licenses covering all kinds of trading activity
Professional licenses covering professions, services, craftsmen and artisans
Industrial licenses for establishing industrial or manufacturing activity
Carrying out business without a trade license is illegal in UAE and is subject to penalties. In addition, the license needs to be renewed every year.
The Dubai Economy had come up with an instant license service that aims to facilitate the issuance of trade licenses in Dubai in 5 minutes! You don’t have to register a trade name, legal contract or even a rent contract; businesses can be started instantly.
There is no standard price for setting up business in UAE as it depends on many factors such as;
Business activity of the firm
The jurisdiction where the company is established
Approvals and certifications
Office space and visa requirements
SETTING UP BUSINESS IN MAINLAND
Selecting the type of business/commercial activity is the primary step while setting up business. Business types are categorized into-
Commercial (Trading)
Professional (vocational)
Industrial
COMPANY TYPES
Limited Liability Company (LLC)
A limited liability company (LLC) can be formed by a minimum of two and a maxi¬mum of 50 persons whose liability is limited to their shares in the company’s capital. Such companies are recognized as offering a suitable structure for organizations interested in developing a long-term relationship in the local market.
LLCs can engage in any industrial, commercial, professional and tourism business.
Joint venture company
A joint venture is a contractual agreement between a foreign party and a local party licensed to engage in the desired activity. The local equity participation in the joint venture must be at least 51%, but the profit and loss distribution can be prescribed. There is no need to license the joint venture or publish the agreement. The foreign partner deals with third parties under the name of the local partner who – unless the agreement is publicized – bears all liability. In practice, joint ventures are seen as offering a suitable structure for companies working together on specific projects.
Public and Private Joint Stock Company
In a joint stock company, the capital is divided into negotiable shares of equal value, wherein each shareholder is only liable for the company’s financial obligations to the extent of their share in the capital.
A Private joint stock company can conduct only commercial and industrial activities whereas public joint stock companies can practice industrial, commercial and professional business activities.
Civil company
Qualified professionals in specialist sectors, that include doctors, accountants, lawyers, consultants, engineers, etc can form a civil company in UAE. These companies should be established as partnerships with the business owners who have professional qualifications in their field of expertise. A local agent is mandatory to start a civil company in the UAE.
Branch of a local or GCC company
A branch of a local or GCC company can be involved in activities that are included in the license of the parent company.
Branch of a Foreign and free zone Company
A branch office, legally regarded as part of its parent company, is a full-fledged business, permitted to conduct activities as specified in its license. A branch office can engage in activities similar to those of its parent company, but it is not permitted to carry on the business of importing the products of its parent company. The name and activity of the branch office will be same as that of the parent company. A branch office can conduct commercial, industrial and professional activities that are authorized on the mainland. Branch offices need to register through the Ministry of Economy.
Sole Establishment
A sole establishment is a legal entity exclusively owned by one individual. He/she will be responsible for all financial responsibilities and liabilities.
In the case of expats, sole establishments are allowed only for practicing professional services, such as management, medical, engineering and IT consultancies (under a civil company).
Benefits of setting up business on Mainland
Can trade with other businesses on the mainland
Greater scope of business activities
Can work with UAE governmental bodies
Can open an office anywhere in the UAE
FREE ZONES IN UAE
The UAE has been excelling economically over the last few decades and the lion’s share of the credit goes to free zones! Free zones in the country are undoubtedly, the strongest pillars of UAE’s robust economy. They have been fruitful in attracting remarkable amount of foreign investment, generating thousands of jobs and facilitating technology transfer into the country. More than half of UAE’s non-oil exports can be attributed to the 50 plus free zones in the country.
Dubai alone is home to more than 30 free zones, contributing significantly to the economy of the city.
Companies operating in the free zones are treated as being outside the UAE for legal purposes. The free zones are suitable for companies intending to use UAE as a regional manufacturing or distribution base, with the bulk of their business outside the UAE.
Legal entities in free zones
In a free zone, you can set up two types of companies; Free Zone Establishment (FZE) and Free Zone Limited Liability Company (FZ LLC). FZE is a single shareholder limited liability company, whereas FZC allows multiple shareholding (maximum 5). Companies can also establish a branch, a representative office or a subsidiary company of their existing or parent company.
An independent free zone authority governs each free zone and is the agency responsible for issuing free zone operating licenses and assisting companies with establishing their business in the zones. A free zone firm is governed by the rules and regulations of the free zone in which it is established.
Free Zone Advantages
The major benefits of establishing your company in a free zone are,
100% foreign ownership
100% direct tax free
100% repatriation of profit and capital
No corporate, withholding and inheritance taxes
No personal income taxes
No currency restrictions
Availability of skilled and experienced workforce
Efficient recruitment procedures
Highly developed infrastructure
High level of administrative support
Modern and efficient communication system
NOTABLE FREE ZONES
Jebel Ali Free Zone (JAFZA)
The oldest free zone in UAE, JAFZA, acts as a hub for the world’s biggest shipping companies. JAFZA’s total trade volume stood at a whopping amount of $83 billion in the year 2017.
Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC)
DMCC, which is home to a vibrant community, innovative infrastructure and world-class services, provides easy access to the world’s key commodities markets.
Dubai Airport Free Zone (DAFZA)
Located adjacent to Dubai International Airport, DAFZA is one of the fastest growing airports in the world. Rapid clearance and processing of paperwork at DAFZA maximizes business activity and efficiency.
Ajman Free Zone
Ajman Free Zone, located at the entrance to the Persian Gulf, is well positioned to serve eastern and western markets. Ajman is only a few minutes’ drive away from Sharjah and Dubai and it provides easy accessibility to the two international airports and four ports.
RAK Free Zone
RAK free zone is home to more than 13,000 multinational companies from over 100 countries, representing above 50 sectors.
Abu Dhabi Airport Free Zone
The strategic location of the free zone coupled with excellent infrastructure and multiple facilities makes ADAFZ one of the most preferred locations to start an enterprise.
SAIF Zone
SAIF Zone is the world’s first ISO certified Airport Free zone and the only Emirate with seaports on the East and West coasts. It showers immense benefits on companies involved in aviation business, airport and related infrastructure and companies that carry out trading of perishable products.
Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC)
A leading financial centre in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia region, DIFC houses more than 2000 active registered companies with a combined workforce of almost 30,000 people. The areas of business within the centre include banking, professional services, global corporations, insurance and wealth management.
Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM)
ADGM is an international financial centre that acts as a key pillar of Abu Dhabi’s Economic Vision. The free zone provides a wide spectrum of services such as banking, insurance, wealth management, asset management and capital market activities.
Certain free zones in the UAE offer dual licenses, that allows free zone companies to expand their operations and have a wider outreach in the UAE market.
The business-accommodating laws, easier labour and immigration procedures and tax structures make these free zones one of the most sought-after business locations in UAE.
OFFSHORE COMPANIES
There are numerous reasons that encourage people to set up their business offshore and tax advantages, confidentiality and minimal bureaucracy, are just a few. Going offshore has become a trend in many countries, and UAE is no exception. According to sources, the UAE is among the top 10 countries in the world that hold the highest offshore wealth.
An offshore company is a business entity that is formulated in a low-tax or no-tax jurisdiction for the purpose of legally minimizing the tax payment and improving the investor ‘s wealth management. Primarily one would open an offshore company to gain confidentiality over one’s financial affairs and grow wealth without intrusion.
Offshore companies can eliminate or minimize many types of tax payments such as on capital gains, profits on business earnings and property sales. An offshore company legitimately assists in gaining confidentiality over the investors’ financial affairs.
Offshore Benefits
An offshore company set-up offers numerous benefits to its investors; the major ones are-
Tax saving or deferral
Asset protection
Stronger privacy
Risk management
A more favorable business climate
Less bureaucracy
Exchange convertibility
No restrictions on the remittance of profits and capital
Security of property rights
Confidentiality
Notable Offshore Jurisdictions
JAFZA Offshore, Dubai
RAK Offshore
Ajman Offshore
Other features
These offshore entities may act as an individual and have all the capabilities and privileges of a natural person
A Registered Agent (legal firms, auditors, consultants) is required to be appointed by the Company from the approved list of Registered Agents
There is a general prohibition on offshore companies from conducting business within UAE
Financial activities like business in banking, insurance or reinsurance are restricted. The Company name must end with the word ‘ Limited’ or ‘ Incorporated’
An offshore company can hold shares in both offshore and onshore companies in UAE
An offshore company can hold a bank account in the UAE for conduct¬ing routine operational transactions
An offshore company cannot hire office space and cannot apply for residential visas.
Directors are mandatory for any type of business setup and their numbers vary from one jurisdiction to another. Moreover, every free zone and offshore authority will have their set of rules and regulations which will affect the role and number of directors.
Recently, the UAE government has come up with various new initiatives that aim to make the country an investor-friendly destination. The Golden card, which gives you the permission to stay in the country for a period of 10 years, is one among them.
Eligibility for a long term (10-year) visa without a sponsor
Investors who have public investments of at least AED 10 million are eligible for the long-term residency visa, provided that the investment falls in any of the below forms;
A deposit of minimum AED 10 million in an investment fund inside UAE.
Investing a capital of not less than AED 10 million in establishing a company in the country.
Partnership with an existing or a new company with minimum share value of AED10 million.
A total investment of minimum AED 10 million in all areas stated, provided that the investment in sectors except real estate is more than 60 per cent of the total investment.
The second category of individuals who can apply for long term residency visa are the ones with specialized talents, which include talents and researchers in the fields of science and knowledge such as doctors, specialists, scientists, inventors, as well as creative individuals in the field of culture and art.
Executives with a salary of Dh30,000 or more can also apply for the visa, on the condition that the applicant should have at least a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent and five years of work experience. A valid employment contract is also mandatory.
Eligibility for a 5-year visa without a sponsor
Individuals who have invested in a property in the UAE, entrepreneurs and outstanding students can apply for a 5-year visa without a sponsor. The gross value of the property in which the person has invested should not be less than AED 5 million and it must be retained for a minimum three years.
Long-term residency visa will not only benefit investors and specialized talents, it will also add value to the economy of the country.
The UAE Cabinet has also amended provisions related to the resolution on family sponsorship of foreign workers. Contrary to the previous rule that allowed only workers doing certain jobs to sponsor their families, the new rule keeps income as a criterion. This means expats can live with their families in the UAE irrespective of their profession.
The UAE cabinet’s recent decision to abolish mandatory bank guarantee for labour recruitment and replace it with a low-cost insurance system, has also been welcomed whole-heartedly by companies and individuals alike.
Latest amendments by the government doesn’t end here; it extends to widows, divorcees and their kids as well, who has the option to apply for a one-year residency visa without a sponsor.
Another change in policy comes with respect to transit passengers. They can stay in the country for 48 hours with a free visa and they can extend their stay for another 48 hours, by paying 50 Dirhams.
UAE has been witnessing high growth in the number of foreign companies being registered here. The expat-friendly initiatives by the government are one of the primary reasons behind the growth. Along with this, initiatives such as Expo 2020, that has the potential to connect companies across the globe, has also helped elevate UAE’s position as a top-notch investment hub.
“The UAE is one among the most competitive nations in the world. The aim of the country is to remain a top destination for ease of doing business, through an agile economy based on flexibility and openness”, says Mr. Jay Krishnan, Partner at HLB HAMT.
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A Study on Cyber Attacks and Security
It takes decades to build reputation and few minutes of cyber security negligence to ruin it
Vimal Ramachandran, Director
Phone:- +971 4 327 7775
Mobile:- +971 52 830 7998
WhatsApp:- +971 56 219 1607
Email:- dubai@hlbhamt.com
When a business is at the peak of success and when you feel nothing can go wrong, you become the target of hackers and the business comes tumbling down like a house of cards. Or as in other cases, your company might be already on a decline phase, not being able to survive the tough competition in the market and to add fuel to the flame, you get attacked.
Yahoo is one such victim of a massive cyber-attack. All three billion accounts of Yahoo were affected by several security breaches in 2013 and 2014; but it took Yahoo two years to disclose the breach. Email addresses, telephone numbers, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers, dates of birth, and hashed passwords of millions of users were stolen and the incident remains one of the biggest data breaches in history.
The cyber breaches resulted in a huge loss for the company and they had to agree for a settlement package, that required it to pay a $50 million settlement to roughly 200 million people affected by the email service’s 2013 data breach. Yahoo’s UK wing was fined £250,000 by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), for the 2014 breach.
The data breach adversely affected Verizon’s acquisition of Yahoo. The sale which was announced with a $4.8 billion price tag, was later on revised with a discount of $350 million, following the disclosure of cyber-attacks.
According to experts, Yahoo had ample opportunity to implement appropriate measures, and potentially stop customers’ data being compromised. But they failed to do so.
The world of cyber crime is vaster than ever and cyber attacks have become more of a sensitive issue, with companies losing not just their data, but money and fame as well.
The issue has become so crucial that companies, irrespective of the size and reputation, remains at the mercy of hackers. Cyber attacks hit businesses almost every day. According to former Cisco CEO John Chambers, “There are two types of companies: those that have been hacked, and those who don’t yet know they have been hacked.”
Your data might be safeguarded with multiple layers of advanced security; but do not turn a blind eye to the fact that hackers are skilled masterminds. A small vulnerability in your computer system’s defences is all it takes a hacker to exploit it. They will find flaws in the code of a website and insert their own code and then bypass security or authentication processes.
Negligent employees are one of the primary causes of cyber security breaches at SMBs. Choosing an easy-to-guess password or not changing the default password on something like a router, makes the job of a hackers easier and hassle-free.
Phishing, an oldest form of cyber-attack, still remains the most widespread and dangerous. With phishing messages and techniques becoming increasingly sophisticated, even technical users find it extremely difficult to recognize it. The method involves extracting personal information under false pretences. A hacker will send you an email asking you to change your password. The mail might look so genuine and professional that you might actually end up changing your password, without giving it a second thought. This is what happened in the run-up to the 2016 US election.
Russian hackers were on constant strive to get into major US institutions, including the White House and the state department. Their method was as simple as sending thousands of phishing mails, in the hope that at least one person will click on it. John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, fell prey to the tactics of the hackers. When he received the mail, he forwarded it to his chief of staff, who then sent it to the campaign’s IT team. Things took a U turn from here. The IT team mistakenly identified the email phishing for Podesta’s password as genuine and directed him to change his password. This resulted in Moscow accessing about 60,000 of Podesta’s emails. The hackers also breached the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The hackers didn’t have to rack their brains in this case, they rather played it smart.
Another common method of attack is a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), where a system is crashed by sending large amounts of traffic. In such incidents, users won’t be able to access the service, which results in revenue loss for the organization. If the service is essential, like in the case of a healthcare company, the consequences will be more than unpleasant. DDoS attacks have become bigger and devastating than ever before. A Cisco report reveals that the number of DD0S attacks exceeding 1 gigabit per second of traffic will rise to 3.1 million by 2021.
The attack on GitHub in 2018, which lead the development platform to struggle with intermittent outages for a brief period, is regarded as one of the world’s largest DDoS attacks. GitHub had to rely on its DDoS mitigation service, Akamai Prolexic, for support following the attack. Prolexic took over as an intermediary and steered all the traffic coming into and out of GitHub and sent the data via its scrubbing centers to remove and block malicious packets. After eight minutes, the attack was dropped off.
Hacking takes various forms and malware attack is one among them. There has been an alarming growth in the number of malware attacks in the last couple of years; nearly 9.32 billion malware attacks were identified in the year 2017. You would have absent-mindedly clicked on a link to download a file, or opened an attachment that may look harmless, unaware of the hidden danger. The malware then takes control of your system, monitors your actions and sends confidential data from your computer to the attacker’s home base, without your knowledge.
Viruses, worms, Trojan horses and ransomware have the capability to wreak havoc across business, government and personal computers. The 2017 WannaCry incident, dubbed as the biggest malware attack in history, infected 230,000 computers across 150 countries. WannaCry is a ransomware that functions like a network worm and spreads rapidly across a number of computer networks. After attacking a system, it encrypts files on the PC’s hard drive and hence, users won’t be able to access it. Decrypting the files will require you to pay a ransom amount in bitcoin.
A security vulnerability in older versions of Windows paved way for the attack. National Health Service was the main victim of the attack, with 70,000 devices hit, that included computers, MRI scanners and blood storage refrigerators.
If it wouldn’t have been for, Marcus Hutchins, a British web security researcher, who stumbled on a kill switch by registering a domain name found in the code, the outcome of such an attack would have been much more horrendous. But, even before that, $130,000 had to be paid in ransom!
According to FBI reports, number of ransomware attacks exceeds 4,000 per day, and 230,000 new malware samples are produced daily(as per other research agencies).
Not content with the current pattern of ransomware attacks, cybercriminals moved one step further by offering Ransomware-as-a-service, wherein they write ransomware code and sell or rent it to others. Even if a person is new to the world of cyber-attack or even if they lack the technical knowledge of how to create ransomware, they can launch attacks without much difficulty with this subscription-based malicious model.
Cyber-attacks are growing significantly, so are the victims. A survey conducted by Symantec, which involved interviewing 20,000 people across 24 countries, revealed that 69% of them were prone to some form of cyber-attack. On an average, 14 adults become the victim of a cyber-attack every second. The data gives us an insight about the seriousness of the issue. We know the method and frequency of cyber-attacks, but what is the motive behind these attack? Is money the only concern?
There are several possibilities that force people to commit such atrocious crimes. They might be young hackers who just want to show-off to their friends, organised cyber-criminal organisations who might be behind money or criminals aimed at political manipulation. A data from Radware, depicts the reasons behind why hackers hack:
• Ransom (41%)
• Insider threat (27%)
• Political (26%)
• Competition (26%)
• Cyberwar (24%)
• Angry user (20%)
• Motive unknown (11%)
Hacking for fun can be better explained with the example of Jonathan Jones, the first juvenile sentenced to serve term for computer hacking. James entered the hackers’ hall of fame, by hacking into NASA and Defense Department computers. He accessed the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and downloaded the proprietary environmental control software for the International Space Station, that controlled the temperature and humidity in the station’s living space.
While the above incident might sound like an immature teenager’s fun activity that went horribly wrong, some adults attack system for their personal gains. Kevin Lee Poulsen, an American former black-hat hacker, hacked into a Los Angeles radio station and blocked all the incoming calls. He took the extreme step to win a Porsche in a competition by the radio station, that was offered to the 102nd caller.
The rise in internet users has led to a significant growth in cyber-attacks. But that does not mean that the process is new; it’s history can be traced back to centuries. France was hit by the world’s first cyber-attack nearly two centuries ago. A national medical telegraph system that was created in the 1790s was attacked by a pair of bankers in 1834 to get a trading advantage in the bond market.
One of the first computer worms distributed via the Internet was the Morris worm or Internet worm of November 2, 1988. A graduate student at Cornell University unleashed a maliciously clever program on the Internet which soon started to propagate at an alarming speed. 6,000 of the approximately 60,000 computers that were then connected to the Internet were hit within a span of 24 hours. Files were not damaged or destroyed, but the impact of the attack was extremely powerful and emails were delayed for days. Some institutions had to stop using the internet for days. It was then that the world realized how important and vulnerable computers had become. Cyber security became a serious concern which was evident from the creation of country’s first computer emergency response team in Pittsburgh, just days following the attack. The incident served as a wake-up-call for everyone across the globe.
The viruses and worms that attacked networks in the olden days has transitioned to something more powerful and challenging in the current era.
Cyber attacks can be categorized into five generations, with the first generation beginning in the 1980s. The process involved transferring files between stand-alone PCS using floppy disks. The attack by Elk Cloner, one of the first known microcomputer viruses, falls in this category. The virus which was developed by a 15-year-old high school student, originally as a joke, attached itself to the Apple II operating system and spread by floppy disk.
In the mid-1990s internet started to become popular and it soon gave rise to the second generation of cyber-attacks. Compared to the first-generation viruses, much more malicious type of super-fast spreading worms took over that resulted in loss worth millions. Companies had to install firewall that helped in tackling the problem to a certain extend.
With the third generation came the demands for remuneration and cyber attacks became more of a business, contrary to the previous generations that were more prank-oriented. Hackers started to exploit vulnerabilities in applications, like in the case of Love bug, a computer worm that attacked millions of Windows personal computers in 2000. The email message which began with the words “Kindly check the attached love letter from me!”, launched the virus once you clicked on the attached file. The virus which was regarded as one of the most aggressive and nastiest, would spread by sending itself to all contacts in the recipient’s email address book. It had the capability to download more hazardous software from a remote website, rename files and redirect internet browsers, once embedded in a host computer.
The 4th generation of cyber-attacks began with Red October, an advanced Cyber-Espionage Campaign, that was aimed at global Diplomatic and Government Institutions. Highly-flexible malware was created by hackers to thieve sensitive data and geopolitical intelligence.
Hackers started to embrace higher levels of sophistication in the 4th generation, which had large-scale financial and reputational impacts on the public.
Currently we live in the 5th generation of cyber-attacks, wherein attackers have started to use latest technology to exploit vulnerabilities. The attacks can happen on networks, mobiles and even on clouds and are often large-scale, state-sponsored mega attacks.
Cyber-attacks are growing as rapidly as technological innovation, but how about cyber security? Are the current measures sufficient to combat attacks? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Many of the organizations use outdated security infrastructure and hence, aren’t equipped to handle these highly sophisticated attacks. According to a recent report, 97 percent of organizations are not prepared for these Gen V cyber threats.
Firstly, one need to understand the fifth-generation threat scenario and then take appropriate measures to protect your system from attack. Unless you have protection that is updated according to the current trends, you won’t be even aware that your network has been hacked.
Cyber defence strategies to strengthen your business against any form of attack is not an option anymore, it has become mandatory. There are numerous ways to defend yourself and your company against an attack and among them Two Factor Authentication (2FA) is one of the simplest yet effective measures. Adding an extra layer of security, other than a single password to gain access to your systems, will help in minimizing attacks drastically. This can take various forms such as an OTP( One Time Password), fingerprint scan, voice recognition or a question and answer. The process promises excellent results without much expense or complication.
Phishing scams have become more sophisticated over the years and separating wheat from chaff is indeed rocket science. These mails look so authentic that it somehow convinces the user to click on the link or open the attachment that comes along with it. So, the best thing to do is, ignore any such mail from an unrecognized sender or the ones that ask for personal or payment details.
A skilled IT team that can defend your company and help you recover in case you become the target of hackers, is more than obligatory. They should be updated with current industry standards and must adopt new Tools, Tactics and Processes (TTPs) for defending the company’s network.
All the employees within an organization might not be digitally skilled and hence, they are highly vulnerable. When you are not vigilant and ignorant of the various methodologies in which your network can be prone to attack, the scenario becomes much more tense.
A risk mitigation strategy adopted by certain companies is to “do nothing – accept the risk.” “If business owners are not willing to take necessary steps or actions to fix the security risks, they should keep the fund ready for the expected loss”, says Vimal Rama, Director of Information Technology, HLB HAMT.
Companies invest tremendous amount of money and resources into securing their networks, but when it comes to training their staff on the various aspects of attack and security, most of them lag behind. Security awareness programs will help you identify different target groups and methods and it ultimately creates a secure environment. Hackers will find it difficult to prey on employees’ ignorance once you are aware of the Do’s and Don’ts.
The rise in Internet-of-Things has posed many challenges to cyber security. On the one hand, your life has become quite easy, where you can control the devices at your house sitting at your office, but on the other hand, the technology can causer serious threats to security. IoT increases the vulnerability towards a cyber-attack, which forces you to step up and take measures to secure your devices. You should test your infrastructure before and after integrating IOT devices, which will help you identify potential security flaws, if any. If you haven’t installed a reliable and effective firewall on your devices, it’s high time you did it. Also, using an Intrusion Detection System, that will help in monitoring your networks, devices and systems for any suspicious activities, can help mitigate problems. To segment and limit the access privilege of certain devices, a device management tool can be of great help.
Secure Socket layer(SSL), a standard measure for secure internet browsing, helps in data encryption. Only the intended user will be able to access the data, thus providing privacy, security and data integrity. It enables secure online transactions between consumers and businesses.
These emerging security technologies will ensure data security to a large extend, but what if your system gets hacked even after protecting it with numerous layers of security? Discovering a malicious attack is indeed a tough call; it might take days and even months to identify an attack.
Hackers won’t inform the victims about their attack; most of the times they carry out their activities without the knowledge of the user. But a hacked system or network exhibits many symptoms and to figure out the same, you need to be extra vigilant.
Look out for these signs to know whether your system has been hacked;
• High outgoing network traffic
• Annoying ads on display
• Crashes
• Pop-up messages
• Disabled security solution
• Unfamiliar icons displayed on your desktop
• Unusual error messages
• Control panel not accessible
• Suspicious shortcut files
The first few hours following the discovery of an attack will be panicking and confusing. You might on the lookout for answers for various questions; when and how did this happen? Are the hackers still in our network? What will happen next? While it is human nature to freak out when a crisis like this occurs, it your action that should speak. Some companies just pull the plug out of the socket to protect their system. But the question is, is that the remedy?
Once a hack has been confirmed, you need to act quickly and carefully since every second counts. Try to get in touch with the incident response team, which can be an in-house group or an external company, as early as possible. “The way you react to a disaster shows how well you are prepared for it”, says Rama.
A study by IBM & Ponemon Institute reveals that leveraging an incident response team significantly reduces the cost of a data breach – saving companies nearly $400,000 on average.
Verifying the attack involves identifying the systems that has been hacked, determining which IP addresses were used and confirming the type of attack. You should immediately warn other users on the network about the attack, so that it doesn’t spread. The infected computers should be isolated and the breach should be disclosed to necessary parties.
Even if you were able to overcome the consequences of a cyber-attack, there is nil assurance that it won’t happen again.
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