EFG Hermes Puts DFM Account Opening on Mobile as Gulf Onboarding Goes Digital
The brokerage's ONE app now issues DFM investor numbers and trading accounts without paperwork, as Gulf firms push onboarding online.
Tariq Benali Tariq Benali covers business and corporate news across the UAE and MENA for Anecdoted, tracking the deals, leadership moves and regulatory shifts behind the region's companies. tariq@anecdoted.com
EFG Hermes UAE now lets investors open a Dubai Financial Market trading account entirely from a smartphone. Digital onboarding has been built into the EFG Hermes ONE app, so a user can obtain a DFM investor number and set up a trading account with no paperwork and no branch visit. Registration and account opening run in one flow on the phone.
Rising activity on the exchange
The feature arrives as participation on the DFM climbs. The exchange onboarded 42,864 new investors during the first half of 2026, and foreign nationals made up 71.4% of that group. Traded value reached $32.5 billion (AED 119.5 billion), 40.4% higher than a year earlier, while average daily traded value rose 45.1% to $273.4 million (AED 1.004 billion).
Foreign investors accounted for 51% of traded value in the period, and institutional investors for 71.2%. The DFM's market capitalization stood at $267.2 billion (AED 981.6 billion) at the end of June.
Read together, the numbers describe an exchange where institutions drive most of the turnover while new account growth leans heavily on investors based outside the country.
Shortening the path to a trade
Khalifa Rabba, the DFM's chief operating officer, said the initiative compresses the journey from an investment decision to taking part in the market and supports the exchange's digital transformation.
On the brokerage side, Alaa Moustafa, managing director of individual retail sales at EFG Hermes, put the firm's first-half market share on the DFM at 48.52%, the highest of any participant. Its share on Nasdaq Dubai was 65.69%.
The onboarding service fits a broader digitalization strategy at EFG Hermes, built on several years of spending on technology and on its UAE operations.
A regional move toward digital onboarding
Comparable work is under way elsewhere in the Gulf. The Dubai World Trade Center Free Zone has partnered with Wio to digitize business banking and cut the time companies need to open accounts.
Dukhan Bank in Qatar has introduced self-service kiosks available around the clock, tied to the Qatar Digital Identity platform. The machines carry out biometric verification and issue cards immediately.
In the UAE, e& money has rolled out a digital salary platform that gives workers IBAN-linked accounts and automated onboarding.
The pattern across these projects is consistent: strip paper out of the process, verify customers faster, and place financial services where people already are, whether that is a phone screen or a self-service terminal.
