Coface survey
Dubai, UAE July, 2026 – The main obstacle to business growth is no longer just the market, but also companies’ ability to make decisions. According to the latest Coface survey of 1,250 business leaders in 13 countries, 68% of them cite slow decision-making as a major obstacle. In a highly uncertain environment, businesses are no longer simply seeking to avoid risk: they must learn to make decisions more quickly. A transformation is underway, gradually turning risk into a driver of decision-making and growth.
Key takeaways:
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- In Dubai, 32% of organisations involve risk teams at the idea stage, above the global average of 24%
- 82% of organisations in Dubai are prioritising AI-driven insights to support faster and more confident decision-making
- 68% of companies identify slow decision-making as a major barrier to growth
- 62% of decision-makers believe that commercial ambition and risk discipline are still fundamentally at odds
- 44% believe that risk and finance teams will become strategic growth partners within the next 3 to 5 years
- 77% expect external partners to provide predictive insights to enable more proactive decision-making
In Dubai, strong governance supports the next stage of decision-making evolution.
Dubai represents a structurally mature market where risk and finance functions are deeply embedded and influential. 32% involve risk at the idea stage, above the global average (24%), and 36% already see risk as a strategic growth partner.
While governance and control are strong, organisations are increasingly focused on enhancing decision-making agility to support future growth. Thirty-eight percent still define risk as a protective function, while 32% identify slow decision-making as the main barrier to growth.
This creates a clear inflection point: as businesses continue to strengthen governance, the opportunity now lies in unlocking greater agility. With 82% prioritising AI-driven insights, organisations are actively seeking tools to move from controlled execution to faster, growth-enabling decision-making.
The findings also align with a broader environment of economic resilience across the Gulf, with the UAE and Saudi Arabia recently reaffirming their sovereign credit ratings with stable outlooks, reinforcing confidence in the region’s long-term economic fundamentals.
Decision paralysis: a new major risk
Long viewed as an external factor, risk is now largely an internal one. In many organizations, decision-making is slowed down by persistent tensions between sales teams and risk functions, as well as by difficulty in making use of available data. Nearly six in ten organizations (59%) believe that feedback from risk teams is perceived as overly cautious or out of touch with the market, which fuels mistrust and hampers decision-making.
This dynamic creates a genuine vicious circle: in the absence of consolidated data — 52% of companies report fragmented data across markets — decisions rely more on judgement, which reinforces caution and further slows down decision-making.
Saying “no” or building a “yes”: a paradigm shift
This paralysis is partly due to a still defensive approach to risk. One in two executives (50%) believes that saying “no” is safer than building a “yes”, even when opportunities could be explored within a structured framework.
Yet expectations are changing rapidly. Whilst only 24% of decision-makers currently view risk teams as true growth partners, 44% anticipate that they will play this role within the next three to five years. The shift is clear: the best-performing companies will be those capable of moving beyond a control-focused mindset to enable “secure yes”, by integrating risk from the very start of the decision-making process.
A minority of companies are leading the way
Only a minority of organizations (12.6% of companies surveyed) currently adopt a fully growth-oriented approach. These companies, identified as Open Advantage Leaders in the study, stand out for their concrete practices: As a result, they are able to transform uncertainties into actionable decisions more quickly and seize opportunities that other organizations let slip by.
- 70% involve risk teams from the earliest stages of decision-making, compared with an average of 58%
- more of them view risk as a competitive advantage (29% versus 19%)
- they foster a culture of debate and challenge (38% versus 23%)
Data and AI: decisive accelerators
In this context, data is becoming a key driver of performance. Yet, only 20% of companies report having consistent data across their different markets, which limits their ability to compare and anticipate.
Faced with these limitations, expectations are evolving rapidly: The aim is to reduce uncertainty and speed up decision-making, without sacrificing control.
- 59% of executives want risk teams to make greater use of predictive insights to simulate scenarios
- 54% want to accelerate the use of AI-driven risk analysis solutions
From “protection” to “projection”: the key role of external partners
Companies today expect far more from their partners than only risk coverage:
- 77% want to benefit from predictive analytics to anticipate market developments,
- 71% expect their partners to give them the confidence needed to seize more opportunities.
More broadly, 65% of decision-makers believe that external partners must enable bolder business decisions by combining protection, data and the ability to anticipate. In this new context, risk management professionals are called upon to become true decision-making partners, capable of transforming uncertainty into more easily actionable decisions.
Xavier Durand, CEO of Coface, states: “The real challenge for companies is no longer to avoid risk, but to know how to turn uncertainty into informed decisions. And that requires data. The ability to capture, analyze and project information is becoming central to saying ‘yes’ earlier, faster and more securely. The most successful companies are not those that take fewer risks, but those that have the best intelligence to make decisions.”
Mohamad Jomaa, CEO and Country Manager for GCC and Egypt at Coface, said:
“Dubai’s findings reflect a market with strong governance foundations and increasingly mature risk practices. As businesses continue to operate in a fast-changing environment, the next stage of growth will depend on their ability to turn data and risk intelligence into faster, more confident decisions. AI-driven insights are becoming increasingly important in helping organisations anticipate change, assess opportunities earlier, and move with greater agility while maintaining strong controls.”
