RAKEZ Smart Licensing: An Innovative Post-License Service Model for Global Investors

Established by the Government of Ras Al Khaimah, RAKEZ is one of the largest economic zones in the region supporting startups, entrepreneurs, SMEs and industrialists with their business setup processes and requirements. We provide a wide range of business licences in the UAE, residence visa services, customisable facilities, as well as value-added support services.

Since July 2023, RAKEZ Licensing & Registration Operations has redesigned post-license services as a single, innovative business product called Smart Licensing. Instead of treating amendments, renewals, deregistrations and immigration as separate procedures, RAKEZ now delivers them as an integrated, digital service model for investors.

Previously, post-license journeys were fragmented and opaque. Processes jumped between portal, email and manual forms. Legal requirements such as handwritten signatures and newspaper publications added 20-30 days to some services. Fees varied widely by service and were difficult for staff, agents and customers to remember. There was no governed service catalogue; knowledge lived in PDFs and individual inboxes. As a result, investors and channel partners relied heavily on internal contacts for basic information, driving high "Where is my request?" demand and putting pressure on back-office teams.

Smart Licensing reframed this landscape as a designed service product with four core innovations:

• Digital, approval-first journeys

  Shareholders now authenticate through the portal, review requests and give consent online. This captures structured data at source, removes most manual signature chasing and aligns RAKEZ licensing with modern, digital investor expectations.

• A unified service catalogue and public service cards

  RAKEZ created a comprehensive service catalogue and web-based service cards for every licensing product. Each card defines the steps, SLAs, documents, outcomes, channels and fees. The same content is used by customers, front office, channel partners and internal teams, becoming the single source of truth for how services work and what they cost.

• Transparent communication and online publication

  Milestone service-request email notifications and tracking are embedded into every journey, so investors know exactly where their request stands and what happens next. A major legal bottleneck was addressed by moving from manual newspaper advertisements to a RAKEZ online publication portal, where required notices are published digitally, searchable and instantly accessible.

• Simplified commercial model and operating design

  Complex, inconsistent amendment fees were replaced with a unified price of AED 1,999 per corporate amendment, with a 30% discount on clubbed changes. This makes pricing easy to quote, compare and govern. Internally, RAKEZ introduced a new operating model that separates Backend Operations (processing and compliance) from a specialised Application Support team that guides customers and agents through complex cases. High-volume, rules-based immigration activities were moved to RPA bots, treating automation as part of the service capacity.

These innovations have produced measurable business results:

• Around 60% faster turnaround times across key licensing services (e.g. new registrations reduced from 7 to 3 days; amendments from 16 to 7 days; new visas from 15 to under 5 days).
• Customer satisfaction of 92%, the highest on record for these journeys.
• Post-license assisted contacts per client reduced from 1.1 to 0.6, despite growth in the customer base and transaction volume.
• 93% of immigration service requests now processed by bots, freeing the equivalent of around 10 full-time employees to focus on higher-value work.
• Approximately AED 8 million in annual operational savings from automation, online publication and process/pricing simplification.

Smart Licensing has turned RAKEZ's post-license services from a pain point into a differentiated business service product: digital-first, transparent, easy to navigate and cost-efficient. It strengthens RAKEZ's position as an innovative, investor-centric free zone in a competitive regional market, and demonstrates clear excellence in innovation in business product and service design at scale.