Dubai: The research points to a lack of a retirement savings culture in the UAE, according to a survey supported by Zurich International Life, in which it found only 33 per cent of UAE residents, have a formal retirement plan.
In Europe and North America, the retirement savings culture is facilitated by employers who provide retirement savings schemes for their employees. But most employers in the UAE do not provide their employees with an opportunity to save for their retirement; instead they consider the gratuity to be a satisfactory alternative.
Zurich International Life called it as a retirement funding time bomb.
Under UAE labour law, employees are entitled to a gratuity at the end of their employment if they have completed one or more years of continuous service. The gratuity rises depending on your length of service and is linked to your basic salary, excluding allowances, bonus and commission payments, making it difficult to calculate. In fact, the research found that almost two-thirds of employees do not know the value of their gratuity.
