Power of Attorney Verification in UAE Property Transactions — Why the Attorney-in-Fact Needs Their Own KYC

What is a Power of Attorney in a UAE property transaction?

A Power of Attorney (POA) is a notarised instrument under which a principal — the actual buyer or seller — authorises another person, the attorney-in-fact, to sign and execute a transaction on their behalf. It is common in UAE real estate when the principal is overseas, a corporate entity acting through a nominated signatory, or otherwise unable to appear in person for signing.

Why is the attorney-in-fact a compliance-relevant party, not just a formality?

The attorney-in-fact is the person whose signature actually binds the transaction — not the principal, who may never be physically present at any point in the deal. Screening only the principal and treating the POA document as a formality leaves the person with real signing authority completely unchecked. Under Federal Decree-Law No. 10 of 2025's KYC/CDD obligations, the natural person actually executing the transaction is the one who needs to be identified and screened, and for a POA-executed deal, that person is the attorney, not the principal.

What does it mean to track a POA transaction properly?

It means the deal record carries more than a scanned document: whether the deal is executed via POA at all, which role the principal held (buyer or seller), the attorney-in-fact linked to their own client record — not just a free-text name typed into a field — and a screening status for that attorney separate from the principal's own screening status. The POA document itself is bound to the deal record, so a compliance reviewer can trace exactly which instrument authorised the signature, and verification is a distinct, explicit action with its own timestamp and reviewer identity — never inferred just because a document was uploaded.

The specific failure mode a POA workflow has to prevent

A weak POA implementation lets the same person be selected as both principal and attorney on the same deal — which defeats the entire point of a Power of Attorney, since the safeguard a POA is supposed to represent (an independent party confirming the principal's intent) collapses if principal and attorney are the same record. A correct implementation excludes the principal from the attorney selection for that deal, and if a conflicting link already exists when the principal role changes, clears it automatically rather than leaving a stale, contradictory pairing on the record.

Does a notarised POA document remove the need for KYC on the attorney?

No. Notarisation confirms the instrument itself — that the principal genuinely granted this authority — not the identity, sanctions status, or PEP status of the person now exercising it. Those are separate facts a notary's stamp does not establish, and they are exactly what KYC/AML screening exists to confirm.

How does POA verification fit into the rest of a conveyancing checklist?

It appears as its own required checklist item — 'Power of Attorney Verified' — on any deal marked as executed via POA, alongside the jurisdiction's standard document requirements (title search, mortgage clearance, SPA execution, escrow verification). It is not a side process tracked in a separate spreadsheet; it is one more gate the deal has to clear before it can advance, visible in the same place as every other compliance requirement on that transaction.

Who should verify a Power of Attorney — the broker, or compliance?

Verification is recorded against a specific user — whoever marks it verified is the reviewer of record, timestamped. In practice this is typically the same person or department responsible for the rest of a deal's KYC file, since POA verification is fundamentally an identity check on the attorney-in-fact, not a legal review of the instrument's validity (which sits with the notary and, where relevant, external legal counsel).