Building a Regulated TCSP from Scratch: How Two Founders Turned a Conviction into a Licensed Practice

The Thesis: Independence as a Service Model

The UAE's corporate services market in 2018 was dominated by two models. At one end, large multinational trust companies — Trident, TMF Group, Vistra — operating with institutional processes but institutional pricing and institutional distance between client and adviser. At the other, a fragmented landscape of unlicensed consultants and company formation agents offering transactional services without the regulatory authority to provide fiduciary services, nominee directorships or trust administration.

Mohanad and Olena saw the gap: a firm small enough that every client works directly with the founders, but regulated enough to perform functions that require a licence — acting as trustee, providing nominee services, serving as registered agent in DIFC and ADGM. The premise was not scale. The premise was depth.

We serve as your reliable companion in unfamiliar territory.— Olena Kysla, Co-founder, Polaris Corporate Services

Two Complementary Skill Sets, One Operating System

The partnership works because the two founders occupy different but interlocking domains. Mohanad, a UAE-licensed Private Notary (Licence No. 47005949) and the firm's Corporate Counsel, leads client advisory across corporate structuring, M&A transactions, international tax planning and cross-border fiduciary governance. His work is the external face of the firm: the structuring analysis, the legal positioning, the client relationship from first consultation through to ongoing management.

Olena, as Chief Executive, runs the operating infrastructure — everything that makes the advisory possible. Corporate secretarial functions, AML compliance governance, client onboarding protocols, regulatory relationships across multiple jurisdictions and the day-to-day administration that keeps a licensed TCSP in good standing with its regulators. She serves as Company Secretary on client matters — not a delegated function, but a principal-led one.

This division is deliberate. In most corporate service providers, the person advising the client is not the person managing the regulatory compliance. At Polaris, both functions report to the same two people — which means the advice a client receives is always informed by the operational and regulatory realities of implementing it.

Innovation drives our mission, and our clients are the spark igniting our inspiration.— Mohanad Al-Meshal, Co-founder, Polaris Corporate Services

The Numbers: Eight Years of Compounding Trust

Over 1,000 clients advised. More than 200 companies incorporated. Coverage across 40+ free zones in the UAE. A three-jurisdiction platform spanning the Emirates, Cyprus and Switzerland. These numbers, accumulated over eight years, represent a particular kind of growth — not the exponential scaling of a technology startup, but the steady compounding of a professional services firm that grows by reputation, referral and repeat engagement.

The Meydan Gold Partner accreditation — the highest partnership tier available — provides clients with priority processing, preferential rates and a dedicated relationship manager. The ADGM Registered Agent status enables Polaris to act as the statutory representative for companies in Abu Dhabi's international financial zone. The Private Notary licence adds a capability that few corporate service providers in the market can offer directly.

The TCSP Licence: Why It Matters

The Trust and Corporate Service Provider licence, issued by the UAE Ministry of Economy and Tourism, is the regulatory credential that separates Polaris from the majority of corporate service providers operating in the market. Without it, a firm cannot legally act as trustee, provide nominee shareholder services, or serve as registered agent for DIFC and ADGM entities. The licence carries obligations — annual audits, ongoing AML compliance reporting, professional indemnity insurance — that create a regulatory moat around the services Polaris can provide.

For clients, the licence means accountability. A licensed TCSP is subject to regulatory oversight that unlicensed providers are not. If something goes wrong — a compliance failure, a dispute over fiduciary duties, a question about the integrity of nominee arrangements — the regulatory framework provides recourse that does not exist in unregulated relationships. This is not a theoretical distinction. In a market where hundreds of consultants offer “company formation” services, the question of who is authorised to perform fiduciary functions is the single most important qualification a client should verify.

What “Principal-Led” Actually Means

The phrase appears on the website and in client presentations, but what does it mean in practice? It means that the person conducting the initial consultation is the same person who designs the holding structure, reviews the tax position, drafts the governance agreements, manages the bank relationship and answers the phone when an urgent question arises at 10pm on a Thursday. There is no handoff to a junior associate. There is no account manager sitting between the client and the expert.

This model has a ceiling — there are only so many hours in two people's days — but it has no quality floor. Every client relationship carries the full weight of the founders' professional reputation, regulatory standing and personal commitment. The 1,000+ clients who have passed through the firm did so because each one received the same level of direct, senior-level engagement. It is, by design, the opposite of scalable. And that is the point.

The Multi-Jurisdictional Platform

The three-jurisdiction platform — UAE, Cyprus, Switzerland — was built over time, not launched at once. The UAE base provides the operational centre: free zone and mainland registrations, Golden Visa facilitation, VAT compliance, bookkeeping and the full fiduciary suite. Cyprus adds EU market access, a 12.5% corporate tax rate and the IP Box regime. Switzerland contributes cantonal tax competition, unmatched political stability and banking infrastructure that remains the global benchmark.

For clients whose needs cross borders — and an increasing proportion do — the platform means a single advisory relationship that spans the entire structure. The holding company in Cyprus, the operating entity in Dubai, the offshore vehicle in ADGM and the family trust in DIFC are all managed under one roof, by the same two principals who designed the architecture in the first place.

Languages as Infrastructure

Polaris operates in English, Russian, Ukrainian, German, Arabic, Hebrew and Turkish. This is not a marketing feature — it is operational infrastructure. The ability to read a Ukrainian shareholder agreement, explain a UAE ESR filing requirement in Russian, or discuss a German tax residency question in the client's native language eliminates the translation layer that typically sits between a service provider and a non-English-speaking client. In a market where miscommunication creates real regulatory and financial risk, language fluency is not a luxury — it is a risk mitigation tool.

Olena's native fluency in Russian and Ukrainian has been particularly significant. The post-2022 migration of Ukrainian and Russian professionals to Dubai created demand for corporate services that could bridge the linguistic, cultural and regulatory distance between the CIS and the Gulf. Polaris was already positioned to serve this community — not as a reaction to market opportunity, but as a natural extension of who the founders are.

The Operating Philosophy

No bank affiliations. No law firm tie-ups. No referral commissions. These are not aspirational statements — they are structural features of how the firm operates. When Polaris recommends a bank, a legal adviser or a free zone, the recommendation is driven by what serves the client's specific needs, not by which provider pays the highest commission. In a market where opaque referral arrangements are endemic, this independence is the foundation of the trust that 1,000+ clients have placed in the firm over eight years.

The commitment to transparency extends to pricing. Every engagement begins with a detailed service breakdown — what is included, what is not, what the total cost will be. There are no hidden fees, no post-engagement surprises, no scope creep without prior agreement. This is how a two-person firm competes with multinational trust companies: not on scale, but on clarity, responsiveness and the irreducible accountability of founders who have staked their professional reputations on every single client outcome.