My Insurance Company Is Delaying My Claim

The single most important fact here is whether this is a motor third-party-liability claim or something else. Motor TPL claims carry an actual statutory deadline — the insurer must flag missing documents within three days and settle a complete claim file within fifteen days, under Insurance Authority Board of Directors’ Decision No. 25 of 2016, still live in the CBUAE Rulebook. Every other kind of claim — property, health, life, marine, general — is only held to the more general standard of paying “as soon as” the risk materialises, with no fixed number of days in the law.

Knowing which category your claim falls into changes what you can credibly say to your insurer, and later to Sanadak, about whether it has actually missed a legal deadline or is simply taking longer than you’d like.

Every escalation route described on this page assumes you’ve already put a formal complaint to the insurer and given it time to respond — you can’t generally skip straight to Sanadak. Email is fine; keep a clear paper trail of when you complained, what you asked for, and any response (or lack of one).

Ask specifically what is outstanding — missing documents, an ongoing assessment, an internal review — and get a timeframe in writing if you can. If the claim is a motor total-loss claim and the delay is past fifteen days from a complete file without justification, note that explicitly; it is relevant to the compensation remedy built into the motor claims rules.

This is one point where the official guidance genuinely conflicts, and it’s worth knowing that rather than guessing. Sanadak’s own site says you generally need 15 calendar days to have passed since your complaint with no response, or an unsatisfactory response, before you can escalate. The UAE’s official u.ae portal says 30 calendar days. These figures haven’t been reconciled publicly, so check the current requirement directly on sanadak.gov.ae before you file, rather than relying on either number here.

Either way, once that waiting period has passed with no resolution, you are entitled to escalate — you don’t need your insurer’s permission or agreement to do so.

Sanadak is the Central Bank’s Ombudsman Unit, and filing a complaint with it is free. It covers car, health, property, general, marine, and life and investment insurance complaints, from natural persons, sole proprietors, and SMEs (not, on this evidence, large corporates) — provided the issue isn’t already in court or already decided by Sanadak once before.

Once filed, Sanadak’s published process aims to acknowledge your complaint within three business days, and can take up to ten business days to request further information if it needs it, with the institution itself given a substantive response window referenced elsewhere as 30 complete business days. This is not instant, but it is a defined, monitored process rather than an informal one.

Insurance complaints specifically are handled through the Insurance Dispute Resolution Committee, which Sanadak’s own site describes as sitting within Sanadak and acting as the first instance for complaints about insurance companies. Some outside legal commentary instead describes the Committee as a later appeal stage above Sanadak — this sequencing has not been independently confirmed either way, so don’t assume one order or the other; ask Sanadak directly, or have a lawyer check, where your specific complaint currently sits.

Fee figures reported for the Committee (a percentage of claim value with a minimum and maximum, versus a flat fee for undetermined-value disputes) come from secondary commentary that wasn’t independently confirmed against the primary rule text — a separate, better-sourced AED 500 fee applies specifically to an appeal of a Sanadak decision, refundable if the appeal succeeds. Don’t assume these are the same fee described twice.

If Sanadak or the Committee decides against you, you generally have a 30-business-day window to appeal that decision. Separately, decisions valued up to AED 50,000 are treated as final, while disputes above that threshold can be appealed to the Court of Appeal within 30 days of the decision — a genuinely different track from an appeal within Sanadak’s own process.

This is where a lawyer becomes genuinely useful rather than optional — working out which appeal window actually applies to your specific decision, and whether it’s worth pursuing, is not something to guess at close to a deadline.

For a straightforward delay on a modest claim, the Sanadak route is designed to be usable without a lawyer. Once the claim is large, the insurer is alleging fraud or misrepresentation, your policy contains an arbitration clause, or you’re dealing with a DIFC or ADGM insurer where the Sanadak route may not even apply, a lawyer who handles insurance disputes becomes far more valuable — both to build the strongest version of your complaint and to keep track of which deadline actually governs your situation.

LEXNOVA is not a law firm and does not negotiate with your insurer or represent you. It can help you describe your situation and explore lawyers whose practice fits an insurance dispute like yours — every match is reviewed by a person, and the advice and representation come directly from the lawyer you choose.