MoHRE Issues Guide on Health Insurance Requirements for UAE Work Permits
- 25.07.2026
- Posted by: Uwe Hohmann
- Categories: Dubai, Middle East
MoHRE (Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation) has published a guide setting out how health insurance requirements apply to the issuance and renewal of work permits in the UAE. The guide does not create new obligations for employers. It consolidates rules that are already in force and confirms how compliance is now verified through the Ministry’s digital systems.
Work Permits Verified Against Insurance Coverage
Under the procedures confirmed in the guide, a work permit cannot be issued until it has been verified that the worker has been provided with a valid health insurance document meeting the standards the Ministry applies. That verification happens electronically. The work permit system checks insurance status directly instead of relying on a separate manual document review.
For employers, the effect works in both directions. Approvals move faster when cover is already in place, because nothing is waiting on a manual check. Where insurance is missing, expired, or falls below the minimum standard, the application simply will not progress. In practice this means insurance should be arranged before a work permit application is filed, not in parallel with it and certainly not afterwards.
The Conditions Attached to the Policy
The guide is specific about what a compliant policy looks like. Cover must meet the minimum approved requirements.
1. It must remain in place for the full validity period of the work permit, not only at the moment of issuance.
2. The worker must not bear any part of the cost of the subscription or its renewal.
3. The policy cannot be cancelled during the work permit validity period in a way that leaves the worker without cover.
The final two conditions deserve particular attention from finance and human resources teams. Passing insurance costs to employees, even partially and even by deduction, is not permitted. Neither is cancelling a policy mid term when an employee resigns or a contract is being wound down, if the underlying work permit remains valid.
Companies with high staff turnover, or those that manage insurance renewals on a different calendar from visa renewals, are the most likely to run into difficulty here.
A System That Now Covers the Whole Country
The nationwide health insurance system for workers was completed at the start of 2025, following the Cabinet Decision that extended mandatory cover to private sector employees and domestic workers in the northern UAE. Abu Dhabi and Dubai already operated their own mandatory schemes, so the decision closed the remaining gaps rather than replacing arrangements that were already working.
The result is that wherever in the UAE a company employs staff, health insurance is now a condition of lawful employment. For groups doing business across several emirates, that makes internal policy easier to write, because the same baseline applies everywhere, even though approved schemes and providers still vary from one emirate to another.
There is one thing that deserves attention, because it affects a large group of existing employees. Workers holding valid work permits issued before 01.01.25 were not required to take out cover the moment the system came into force. The obligation instead applies when their residency permit comes up for renewal. That group is now probably going through renewal, which means companies that hired before 01.01.25 and have not revisited their insurance arrangements since are the most likely to find an application held up.
What This Means for Your Business
The takeaway is about timing and record keeping rather than new compliance costs.
Health insurance now needs to be treated as part of the work permit process itself, arranged before an application is submitted and maintained without any gap until the permit expires.
Renewal calendars should align insurance expiry dates with work permit expiry dates, because a lapse in one will now block the other automatically.
The first practical step for most companies is a simple audit of employees hired before 01.01.25. Any of those staff approaching a renewal will need valid health insurance in place before the file is submitted.
Comprehensive UAE Business Solutions
At TME Services we manage work permits, visas, and employee documentation for companies across the UAE, and we see where these processes tend to break down in practice. Getting the sequence right at the outset avoids delays that are far harder to resolve once an application has started.
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