Our standards
- Accurate. Every UAE rule and figure is traced to an official source, with the date we checked it.
- Independent. No lender or product provider pays for, reviews or approves what we write.
- Plain English. Short sentences, terms explained the first time they appear, and a glossary for the rest.
- Answer first. Each guide opens with a direct answer to its question that makes sense on its own.
- Explanation, not advice. We explain how things work, compare options and show the working. We do not tell you which product to take.
- No hype. No "best" lists, no urgency, no testimonials and no invented examples presented as real people.
Sources we use
Official and primary sources
Rules and figures come from the source that sets them:
- the Central Bank of the UAE: its Rulebook, regulations, standards and notices;
- the Etihad Credit Bureau (AECB) for credit reports and scores;
- the UAE Government portal (u.ae) and federal laws published on official portals;
- Sanadak, the ombudsman unit for complaints about licensed financial institutions;
- the Dubai Land Department for property fees, and courts' official pages for court procedures.
When a guide needs a figure that only a bank sets, such as its own fee, we quote the bank's own page with the date we read it, or leave the figure out.
What we do not use as a source for facts
News articles, comparison sites, forums and marketing pages can point us to a question or a source, but we never take a figure from them. If we cannot confirm a figure on an official page, it does not appear on the site.
How a guide is made
- Brief. We set the question the guide answers, its outline and the official sources and figures it needs.
- Draft. The guide is written from the brief, taking every UAE figure from our facts register.
- Fact check. A separate check compares every number and rule in the draft with its source. Anything that cannot be confirmed is removed and kept on a list of open questions until it can be.
- Review and publication. The guide is checked for clarity, links and layout, then published.
Under the headline of each guide you will see three dates:
- Published: when the guide first appeared.
- Updated: the last time its content changed in a meaningful way.
- Reviewed: the last time the whole guide was checked against its sources.
Numbers and the facts register
We keep every UAE-specific figure, such as a cap, a fee, a time limit or a score range, in one facts register. Each entry records the rule as the source states it, the figure, who it applies to, the source's title, publisher and web address, and the date we opened it. Guides show key figures in fact boxes with that source and date, so a figure is the same everywhere on the site. Our methodology explains the register in more detail.
Independence
We do not promote products. The site does, however, feature clearly-labelled sponsored partners — for example IWGT, a crypto-to-AED OTC desk — and every such link is marked rel="sponsored" and kept inside a box labelled “Sponsored”. Sponsorship never influences which topics we cover, what we say about them, our figures, our calculator results or our ratings. Our page on how we make money lists our commercial relationships in full.
Corrections and updates
When an official source changes, we update the facts register, then the pages that quote the figure, and review them again. If you find an error, our corrections policy explains how to report it and how we show the change.
Bylines
All guides are published under The Credit Zone Editorial Team. A writer or expert reviewer is named on a guide only when they are a real person listed on the editorial team page. You can read more about us, or see how the rules work in practice in a guide such as your rights as a borrower, which lists every source it uses.