Islamic wealth management evolves as younger generations drive change

PUBLISHED: Thu 15 Oct 2026, 9:46 PM. Imagine a family entering a Dubai adviser’s office. Their business operates from the UAE, yet much of their real estate lies overseas, and the heirs who will inherit are scattered across several countries.

Shifting Priorities in Family Wealth

A decade ago, discussions centred on growth opportunities in private markets. Today, the opening questions are more likely to concern who receives what and whether the plan respects the family’s faith.

“Families are actively seeking out Shariah‑compliant planning now, where once they settled for it,” says Nazneen Abbas, Vice President at the Continental Group, where she guides families through succession. “They no longer want to choose between financial planning and faith.”

For years, affluent Muslim families faced a trade‑off: they could obtain sophisticated, globally mobile planning or they could adopt a structure they believed complied with Shariah. Conventional tools usually supplied the former, while Shariah‑aligned alternatives remained faithful but offered less, forcing families to pick one and accept the other.

Islamic finance reached $5.98 trillion in 2024. The UAE is the world’s fourth‑largest Islamic finance centre, with Islamic banks holding 18 % of the nation’s banking assets, amounting to $242.7 billion in the first half of 2025. Nevertheless, many advanced private‑wealth instruments and the experts who use them originated elsewhere.

“Conventional wealth planning has decades of precedent in trusts and estate structuring, and in coordinating across borders,” says Abbas. “Islamic wealth planning has matured significantly, but there was the challenge of having fewer advisors who combine genuine Shariah literacy with the technical, cross‑border expertise sophisticated families need.”

Many families still assume that compliance limits choice. “In practice, it means different mechanisms working toward similar outcomes,” she says.

“Shariah‑compliant investments are now broad,” says Neil De Sousa, Head of the Middle East at Schroders Wealth Management. “The more significant challenges tend to arise in wealth structuring, succession planning and cross‑border estate planning, where families often require solutions that are simultaneously Shariah‑compliant, legally robust and effective across multiple jurisdictions. Encouragingly, the market is evolving beyond basic compliance, with growing innovation aimed at providing wealthy families with the same breadth and sophistication of wealth planning available globally while remaining aligned with their beliefs and values.”

Dividing a family business equally among three children is rarely straightforward, and liquidating a property portfolio at the onset of a succession dispute is often impossible. Moreover, an operating company may show a high paper value yet leave the family short of cash when needed.

“Muslim family businesses often stall at succession even when the leadership decisions are clear,” says Abbas. “Too often, the family could not source a genuine Shariah‑compliant Takaful product that would provide the liquidity to settle heirs fairly without selling or fragmenting the business.”

Innovations in Shariah‑Compliant Wealth Planning

In June, Manulife introduced Maseera Indexed Takaful, a Shariah‑compliant wealth‑planning tool aimed at affluent families and business owners. It blends life protection with growth tied to the S&P 500 Sharia Index, offers liquidity access and includes an optional Hibah mechanism for asset transfer. The product is structured to serve as family‑wealth infrastructure, with protection forming one component.

Takaful operates on mutual cooperation among participants rather than transferring risk to an insurer. Designs such as Maseera aim to avoid riba (interest), gharar (excessive uncertainty) and maysir (gambling).

Abbas describes the outcome as a dedicated pool of value that sits outside the business itself. “The liquidity can support estate equalisation between active and non‑active heirs, or fund a buyout,” she says. “Sometimes it simply gives the family time to resolve governance questions without pressure, which allows for a faster and less disputed transfer of benefits, in line with Islamic principles.”

“Used thoughtfully, Abbas says, products of this kind can become “a practical bridge between faith‑based requirements and the real‑world liquidity demands of a multi‑generational transition.”

National Strategy and Future Demand

The UAE’s National Strategy for Islamic Finance, unveiled in May 2025, targets more than doubling Islamic banking assets to Dh2.56 trillion ($697 billion) by 2031.

For an increasing number of Muslim families in the UAE, the transmission of wealth to the next generation has become as urgent as its growth. Approximately $1 trillion of family assets is projected to pass to a new generation in the GCC by the end of the decade.

“A large cohort of UAE family businesses is approaching succession simultaneously, and the families leading them want solutions that feel authentically theirs,” says Abbas, who expects demand for Shariah‑compliant succession and legacy planning to outpace broader wealth management over the next five years.

The Dubai family described earlier, with assets abroad and heirs living overseas, faces an additional layer of complexity.

“Overseas succession laws can differ significantly from both Shariah principles and GCC expectations, making coordinated estate planning essential,” says De Sousa. “Many families require international wills and succession arrangements to ensure their wishes are effective across jurisdictions. Probate can also become complex when assets and beneficiaries are located in different countries, while overseas assets and internationally resident heirs may create exposure to foreign inheritance, estate and gift taxes. Careful planning is therefore critical to preserving wealth across generations”

While financial performance remains important, it is no longer the sole consideration for wealthy families. Abbas observes that conversations about family governance are now occurring alongside financial planning discussions.

“Islamic finance offers something the wider industry is only beginning to embrace, which is the idea that wealth carries responsibility as well as returns,” she says. “The opportunity lies in bringing faith and modern financial planning structures together, so families can protect and transfer wealth across generations without compromising the principles they value.”