EIBOR
EIBOR is the benchmark UAE banks price variable mortgage rates from. When it moves, a variable rate moves with it, and so does your payment.
EIBOR stands for the Emirates Interbank Offered Rate. It is a daily reference rate: the rate at which a panel of banks in the UAE are able and willing to borrow dirhams from the UAE money market, in a reasonable market size, for a given period.
Each of those periods is called a tenor. EIBOR is fixed for six of them: overnight, one week, one month, three months, six months and one year.
For a mortgage, EIBOR matters because a variable rate is priced from it. A variable rate follows one tenor, and your offer says which one.
The Central Bank of the UAE. Its EIBOR regulations give it the role of administrator, which means it controls how the benchmark is determined and published.
The panel banks submit their rates. For each tenor, the top and bottom quarter of those submissions are left out where possible, and the fixing is the average of the rest. Leaving out the extremes gives one unusual submission less pull on the result.
The Central Bank makes the fixing available on its website, together with its history. That is the official source. CredMe does not set EIBOR and cannot change it.
These are the latest one month, three month and six month EIBOR figures CredMe has published. Each is dated by the fixing it comes from, not by today’s date.
Loading the latest published EIBOR.
Figures credited to the Central Bank of the UAE are its validated official fixing. Where CredMe has published the benchmark itself, it is labelled as CredMe’s published benchmark instead. Your own rate is reset on the dates your offer sets out, so it may use a different fixing from the one shown here.
A variable rate has two parts. An EIBOR tenor, plus the bank’s own margin.
The margin is set in your offer. The EIBOR part moves with the market. Each time your rate is reset, it picks up the latest fixing for its tenor, and your payment is worked out again from there.
So two offers that follow the same tenor differ by their margins, and the margin tells you more about the years ahead than today’s headline rate does. The mortgage calculator shows what the products published for your profile would cost you.
Islamic home finance speaks of a profit rate rather than an interest rate, and structures the contract differently; how Islamic home finance works explains what changes and what does not.
Priced as an EIBOR tenor plus the bank’s own margin from the start. Your payment can go up or down each time the rate is reset.
The rate is set for an agreed period and does not follow EIBOR during it, so your payment is predictable for those years.
A fixed period first. Where your offer says the rate then reverts to variable, the new rate is EIBOR plus the margin written into that offer.
The part to read closely is what happens after a fixed period. A low fixed rate tells you about the first years. The margin that applies afterwards tells you about the rest of the loan.
The arithmetic is simpler than it looks, and it does not need to know what EIBOR is today.
Take an outstanding balance of AED 1,000,000 on a variable rate.
A month of interest is the balance, times the annual rate, divided by twelve. So each 1 percentage point added to EIBOR adds about AED 833 of interest a month: 1,000,000 × 1 ÷ 100 ÷ 12.
The stress test looks 2 to 4 percentage points above the current rate. On the same balance, that is about AED 1,667 to AED 3,333 more interest a month.
If your instalment is recalculated over the remaining term, it rises by less than the extra interest, because part of each payment was already repaying the loan.
Illustration only, using a round hypothetical balance and a hypothetical change in EIBOR. It is not a quote and not a prediction, and your own figures will differ with your balance, margin and remaining term.
The point is the direction and the scale. A rise in EIBOR reaches a variable payment at the next reset, and the larger the balance, the more each step costs.
Because the rate you start on is not the rate you will always pay.
When a bank works out your debt burden ratio, the Central Bank’s mortgage regulations require it to stress test the loan at 2 to 4 percentage points above the current rate of interest, depending on where rates are in the cycle. Where an introductory rate applies, the test uses the rate that will apply once it ends.
That builds a rise in rates into the affordability check before you borrow. How the debt burden ratio works covers the rest of that calculation, and mortgages in the UAE is the overview this page sits under.
Look at the rate you are moving onto before the date arrives, not after it.
If your loan reverts to EIBOR plus a margin, that is your rate from then on. Weigh it against what switching would cost and save. Whether refinancing is worth it walks through that decision.
CredMe’s assessment is an initial assessment, not a lending decision. A CredMe Mortgage Consultant goes through it with you before any bank is approached, and the lender underwrites the application and makes the final decision. CredMe is not a bank and cannot approve or decline a mortgage.
Written by CredMe Team
Based on CredMe's mortgage assessment methodology, verified Central Bank of the UAE sources and CredMe's published EIBOR benchmark
Last reviewed 14 September 2026
What EIBOR is, who administers it and how the fixing is calculated come from the Central Bank’s EIBOR regulations. The stress test comes from its mortgage regulations. Both were opened and read on the date shown. The EIBOR figures are read from CredMe’s published benchmark each time the page loads, and none is written into the page. The example uses made-up round numbers.
Indicative guidance only. Not a formal offer of finance, not a rate quote and not a forecast. Each bank sets its own margins and terms, and every figure depends on full underwriting by the lender. CredMe is not a bank and cannot approve or decline a mortgage. See our disclaimer.
The UAE debt burden ratio explained: what counts as income, what counts as debt, why 50% is a ceiling rather than an entitlement, and how the stress test changes the answer.
Whether moving your UAE mortgage is worth it, what switching actually costs, and when staying with your current bank is the better answer.
How mortgages work in the UAE: what the Central Bank fixes, what each lender decides, and which question to answer first depending on whether you are buying, refinancing or self-employed.
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Published on CredMe