By law, UAE does not mandate your business entity financials to be audited. However, some free zones have mandated audited financials as a requirement towards renewal of annual licensing process. First thing you need to do is pull out a list of approved audit firms as per the jurisdiction/free zone where your business is established.
Another reason you may need to spend a little more time on finalizing an auditor is for availing credit facilities from your bank. Banks do maintain a list of approved auditors and have an internal process of ranking them as A, B, C and D categories. As per our understanding, this ranking of auditors is almost same in most banks as this list is borrowed informally by banks and the same list is seen circling the UAE banking diaspora. It is indeed a challenge for a new auditor to make it to C or above category in this list as banks do not have a process or time to conduct due-diligence on an audit firm. Thanks to that individual who would have prepared a list once upon a time, and that list is still being borrowed by banks from one-another.
Let us spill the beans for you: