If you have a variable-rate mortgage in the UAE, a number you have probably never looked up is quietly setting what you pay each month. It is called EIBOR, it is published every working day by noon, and almost nothing on the consumer internet explains where it comes from.
This is that explanation. It is more interesting than it sounds, mainly because the mechanism is surprisingly hands-on — a panel of banks, a submission window that closes at 11:30, and a set of rules for what happens when not enough of them reply.
What EIBOR is
The Emirates Interbank Offered Rate is the benchmark for what it costs banks to borrow dirhams from each other. It is administered by the Central Bank of the UAE, which appoints a calculation agent to compute and publish the daily fixings.
Six tenors are published every working day: overnight, one week, one month, three months, six months and twelve months. The regulations require publication by 12:00 UAE time — a deadline rather than a fixed moment — on the Central Bank's own website and through market data platforms.
The three-month fixing is the one most consumers encounter, because it is the reference most commonly used in UAE mortgage pricing.
How the number is actually made
A panel of between eight and fourteen banks submits a rate each morning — under the regulations as they stand, conventional banks only. Panel membership is set by the Central Bank against three criteria: size, relevance and the nature of the bank's operations. The panel has included Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, Emirates NBD, First Abu Dhabi Bank, HSBC Bank Middle East, Mashreq and Standard Chartered among others.
What each bank submits is defined precisely: the rate at which it is able and willing to access dirham funding, in reasonable market size, from the UAE money market just before 11:00 local time. Reasonable market size is fixed by a minimum transaction threshold set in the regulations — the published PDF renders that figure ambiguously, so we have not reproduced a number for it here.
Submissions open at 11:00:00 and close at 11:29:59, with a manual exception window until 11:55 for late entries.
The waterfall
Banks cannot simply guess. The regulations set a three-step hierarchy for arriving at a submission:
- Actual interbank transactions. Unsecured interbank deposits at or above the size threshold, computed as a volume-weighted average rate. Real trades first.
- Unsecured wholesale deposits. Government, government-related entity, corporate and non-bank financial institution deposits above the threshold with maturities beyond 35 days — used only where step one has no usable data, and again volume-weighted.
- Expert judgment. Only where neither of the above yields sufficient or representative data, and even then it runs in two levels. Level one is market observation — observable third-party transactions, accredited brokers' quotes (at least two, documented) and historical data adjusted by reference to instruments including interest rate futures, forward rate agreements, interest rate swaps, FX forwards, overnight index swaps, repo rates, short-dated government bonds and Central Bank rates including certificates of deposit. Level two — broader macroeconomic conditions and the bank's own credit standing — applies only where level one is not representative of the market.
The trim
Submissions are not simply averaged. The highest and lowest are discarded before the average is taken, on a scale set by how many banks replied:
| Submissions received | Treatment |
|---|---|
| 0 to 4 | No fixing is published |
| 5 to 7 | Highest 1 and lowest 1 discarded |
| 8 to 10 | Highest 2 and lowest 2 discarded |
| 11 to 14 | Highest 3 and lowest 3 discarded |
The remainder are averaged and published to five decimal places. If four or fewer banks have submitted by the close of the contribution window — including the late-submission window that runs to 11:55 — a fallback arrangement is triggered that extends the window to 12:30. If the minimum is still unmet, a formal "no fix" notice is published at 12:30 instead of a rate.
Panel banks must retain the underlying transaction data, communications and reasoning behind every submission for five years.
Discarding the extremes at both ends means no individual bank's submission can move the published rate much, which is the structural defence against the manipulation problems that affected interbank benchmarks internationally. The transaction-first waterfall does the same job from the other direction — it anchors submissions to trades that actually happened rather than to opinion.
What this does to your mortgage
A UAE variable-rate mortgage is typically priced as EIBOR plus a margin — three-month EIBOR plus 0.70%, to take an illustrative figure.
Two components, behaving very differently. The margin is fixed for the life of the loan and set by the bank when you borrow. EIBOR moves daily but your rate does not — it resets on a schedule written into your facility agreement, most commonly every three or six months, using whatever the fixing was on the reset date.
Three consequences follow.
Your payment changes in steps, not continuously. EIBOR can move all week without affecting you. What matters is where it sits on your specific reset date.
Your reset date is worth knowing. It is in the facility agreement and most borrowers cannot name it. It determines which fixing you get.
The margin is where you negotiate. You cannot influence EIBOR. The margin is a commercial term, it varies between banks, and it improves with a salary transfer — as covered in what a salary transfer actually costs you.
Why it tracks American decisions
Because the dirham is pegged to the US dollar, UAE interest rates must stay broadly aligned with US rates — otherwise capital flows would put the peg under pressure. So the Central Bank moves its base rate in step with the Federal Reserve, and EIBOR moves with the resulting funding conditions.
The Central Bank's base rate has been 3.65% since December 2025, held at both the April and July 2026 decisions, each following the corresponding Fed decision.
Which means a UAE mortgage holder is, practically, more affected by American monetary policy than by anything decided locally. The full mechanism is in our explainer on the AED–USD peg and what it means for an expat portfolio.
Two different numbers that people conflate. The base rate is set by the Central Bank as a policy decision. EIBOR is a market rate reflecting what banks charge each other, and it moves with funding conditions, liquidity and expectations as well as with policy. They travel together and they are not the same, so a change in one does not automatically mean an equal change in the other.
Looking it up
The Central Bank publishes the daily fixings on its own website, and most UAE banks reproduce the current rates on their public pages. Check the tenor before reading anything into a number — the three-month and twelve-month fixings can differ meaningfully, and it is the tenor named in your facility agreement that governs your loan.
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The useful thing about understanding EIBOR is not that it lets you predict anything. It does not. It is that it separates the two halves of a variable mortgage rate, and only one of them is negotiable.
Borrowers tend to shop on the headline rate, which bundles a margin they can influence with a benchmark nobody can. Comparing offers on the margin — and on the reset frequency, which determines how quickly changes reach you — is a more useful exercise than comparing today's all-in numbers, because today's all-in number will not be tomorrow's.
The other observation is about where to look. Because EIBOR follows US policy through the peg, the leading indicator for a UAE mortgage payment is the Federal Reserve rather than anything published in the Gulf. That is a slightly strange thing to internalise and it is entirely correct.
Mortgage rates, DLD fees and service charges, run against renting on a full worked example.
Common questions
The Emirates Interbank Offered Rate — the benchmark for what it costs banks to borrow dirhams from one another. It is administered by the Central Bank of the UAE and published each working day by 12:00 UAE time across six tenors from overnight to twelve months.
A panel of eight to fourteen banks submits rates between 11:00 and 11:30. Submissions must be based on actual interbank transactions where available, then wholesale deposits, then structured expert judgment. The highest and lowest submissions are discarded — one, two or three at each end depending on how many were received — and the rest averaged.
A variable UAE mortgage is priced as EIBOR plus a fixed margin, and it resets periodically — commonly every three or six months — at whatever the fixing is on the reset date. The margin does not change; the benchmark does.
No. The base rate is a policy decision by the Central Bank. EIBOR is a market rate reflecting interbank funding conditions. They move together but are not identical.
If four or fewer submissions are received by the close of the contribution and late-submission windows, a fallback extends the window to 12:30. If the minimum is still unmet, no fixing is published for that day and a notice is issued at 12:30 instead.
Next steps
- Find the tenor and margin named in your facility agreement — "three-month EIBOR + 0.70%" has two numbers and only one is negotiable.
- Find your reset frequency and date.
- Look up the current fixing for your tenor on the Central Bank's site.
- When comparing mortgage offers, compare margins and reset frequency, not today's all-in rate.
- Follow US rate decisions rather than local commentary — that is what moves this.
Further reading on ExpatWealthPlus
- Best savings accounts UAE
- Bonds or cash for the defensive part of a Gulf portfolio?
- Pay off a UAE personal loan or invest the surplus?
Official sources
Every figure in this article is checked against the primary source. These are the places to verify the current position for yourself, since rates, rules and product terms change.
- CBUAE — EIBOR rates →The official daily fixings across all six tenors
- CBUAE — Regulations regarding EIBOR submissions →The full rulebook: panel composition, the waterfall, trimming and fallbacks