Derayah and the rise of everyday investing in Saudi Arabia

Published: 2026-06-08T12:08:00.000Z

Not long ago, investing in Saudi Arabia felt reserved for the wealthy and well connected. Derayah Financial set out to dismantle that idea, and helped rewire how a generation of Saudis thinks about money. Founded in 2009, it was built on the belief that wealth creation should be open to everyone.

Not so long ago, investing in Saudi Arabia felt like something reserved for the wealthy or the well connected, a world of paperwork, brokers and minimum balances that quietly told ordinary people they need not apply. Derayah Financial set out to dismantle that idea, and in doing so it helped rewire how a generation of Saudis thinks about putting their money to work. Founded in 2009, the company built itself around a simple but stubborn belief, that wealth creation should be open to everyone rather than locked behind institutional doors. The way it delivered on that was through technology. Derayah was among the first financial firms in the kingdom to offer a global online trading platform aimed squarely at retail investors, letting people buy and sell across local, regional and international markets from a single account. Today it ranks as one of the largest independent digital brokerages in the country, and the scale of the shift it rode is striking. Between 2016 and 2023 its client accounts grew roughly twelvefold, a surge that turned a niche service into a mainstream habit. The company's leadership has pointed to the pandemic as an accelerant, a moment when housebound Saudis turned to their phones and discovered they could manage a portfolio in minutes rather than days. What makes the platform genuinely different from the old model is how much friction it strips away. Account opening that once took ages now happens almost instantly. Fractional shares let someone with a modest amount of cash own a slice of an expensive stock rather than being priced out entirely. Zero commission trading on Saudi and US stocks removes the nagging fees that used to eat into small investors' returns. Layered on top is a robo advisory service that builds and rebalances a portfolio automatically for people who would rather not pick stocks themselves, plus a mutual fund supermarket pulling together options from multiple managers in one place. Access stretches across dozens of markets and instruments, from equities and ETFs to sukuk, bonds and derivatives. Beyond brokerage, Derayah has grown a sizable asset and wealth management arm, which had gathered around 15 billion riyals in assets, and in March 2025 it took the symbolic step of listing its own shares on the Saudi Exchange. For a company built on opening up markets, going public was a fitting bookend. The story also reflects something larger happening across the region. The Middle East and North Africa is home to a young, mobile first population that increasingly expects to manage money the way it manages everything else, through an app. Saudi Arabia in particular has pushed hard under Vision 2030 to deepen its capital markets and widen participation, while the UAE and others chase the same goal. Derayah's rise shows how a homegrown platform can both ride that wave and help create it, nudging investing from an elite pursuit toward an everyday one.