How to cancel a savings or life insurance plan in the UAE

How you cancel and what you get back depends on timing. Inside the free-look period you get a refund of your premium. After it, you get the surrender value, which can be much less than you paid.¹

Are you still inside the free-look period?

You have at least 30 calendar days from the earliest of three dates: the day the policy was issued, the day cover started and the day you signed the documents.¹ The free-look deadline tool works out your date.

Within that period:

• the insurer must refund the full premium, or adjust it to the fund value with gains as well as losses passed to you, and no bid-offer spread or other charge;¹
• it may deduct only reasonable medical underwriting costs, with a receipt and report;¹
• the people who sold you the plan may not ask why you are cancelling.¹

If you bought the plan through a bank, the Central Bank’s consumer standards also give a cooling-off period of 5 complete business days after you sign, unless a longer period applies to the product. You lose it only if you sign a written waiver.²

Insurers’ own documents set out how to do it. Sukoon’s Term Protect asks for the policy to be returned with a letter signed by the policy owner, and refunds the total premium less any medical examination fees.³ Zurich’s documents ask you to return the cancellation notice from your policy pack.⁴

Send the cancellation in writing before the deadline and keep proof of the date.

What do you get back after the free-look period?

The surrender value: the cash value of the policy after surrender charges.¹ The law in force from 1 June 2026 lets anyone paying regular premiums end the contract at any time by written notice, and releases them from later premiums.⁵ It does not set the amount you get back. That comes from the policy.

How much is lost depends on the plan’s charges:

• In Zurich’s Futura, 50% of regular premiums in the first 24 months go on set-up charges. There is no surrender charge, so you get the policy value, which reflects those charges and fund performance.⁶
• In Zurich’s single-premium Wealth Accumulation Plan, a surrender charge of 5.75% applies in the first month after each premium, falling to zero over three years.⁴
• A term plan such as Sukoon’s Term Protect has no surrender value at any time.³

The seller had to give you the surrender value at the end of each year on a separate red page that you signed.¹ That page is your starting figure. Ask the insurer for the current value in writing.

The rules say the insurer’s profit on a surrender should not be equal to or greater than it would have earned if you had kept the policy, and that surrender charges must be shared fairly between you and the company.¹

Can you stop paying without cashing in?

It depends on the policy terms. If you stop paying into a unit-linked plan, its charges keep coming out of the fund. Zurich warns that Futura may then not have enough value to cover its charges and will lapse with no value.⁶

The instructions say that if you stop premiums and use the surrender value to buy single-premium cover for the rest of the term, the surrender charges on that conversion should be minimal and exclude amounts you have already paid, such as commission and set-up charges.¹

Ask the insurer to quote both options in writing: surrendering now, and stopping premiums while keeping reduced cover.

Who do you send the request to?

The insurer, or the bank that sold the plan if it accepts requests. Mashreq, which sells plans from several insurers, says a surrender request can go to the insurer or any of its branches, with a copy of your passport, your Emirates ID and the signed full surrender form, and that the money is paid to the bank account you give on the form.⁷ If you pay by direct debit, ask your bank to cancel the instruction as well.⁷

During the free-look period the insurer may contact you to ask why you are cancelling, but the instructions treat pressure on you as a breach of the code of professional conduct.¹ If the insurer delays or you dispute the amount, follow how to complain about a life insurer.

What if you were mis-sold the plan?

The instructions list what the seller had to give you: an illustration, signed declarations, the red surrender page, the five-year fund performance, and, for a plan with little protection, a signed red warning.¹ If any of these is missing from your documents, or a seller replaced an existing policy to earn commission, write that down with dates.

Complain to the insurer first, quoting what is missing. If you are not satisfied, take it to Sanadak, the financial ombudsman unit for banks and insurers. The steps are in life insurance complaints.