Workshop on the Role of Technical Cooperation to Mobilize Private Capital in EMDEs

__Friday, October 30, 2026, 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM CET__

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Convergence and GIZ invite you to a workshop on the role of technical cooperation to mobilize private capital in EMDEs, taking place on the sidelines of GIIN Impact Forum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

The workshop will showcase findings from Convergence’s latest research report 'Technical Cooperation Approaches for Mobilizing Private Capital in Developing Countries'. Produced with the support of GIZ, the German agency for international cooperation, the report explores technical assistance and technical cooperation approaches from the diverse perspectives of providers, recipients, and implementers. It features case examples involving the Global Green Growth Institute, BlueOrchard, and MOBILIST among others. Participants will reflect on the implications of the research findings for their own work and explore new collaboration opportunities.

*To ensure a diverse audience, attendance is limited to one person per organization. You do not need a ticket to GIIN to attend this side event, as we will be in a separate event space.*

Convergence and GIZ invite you to a workshop on the role of technical cooperation to mobilize private capital in EMDEs, taking place on the sidelines of GIIN Impact Forum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Technical Cooperation to Mobilize Private Capital in EMDEs

BB26 Action Event

*Part of Building Bridges 2026.*

Institutional investors are increasingly seeking investment opportunities in emerging markets that align financial returns with sustainable development impact, yet accessing these opportunities at scale remains challenging. This session will spotlight new approaches and investment solutions developed by Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) to facilitate private capital deployment into emerging markets. Discussions will focus on practical examples of commercial investment opportunities, highlighting how de-risking mechanisms and partnership models can support scalable institutional allocations.

Unlocking Scalable Investment Opportunities in Emerging Markets

This session will spotlight new approaches and investment solutions developed by Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) to facilitate private capital deployment into emerging markets.

Unlocking Scalable Investment Opportunities in EMDEs

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__Wednesday, September 30, 2026 at 9:00AM - 12:00PM WAT__

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This invite-only event, hosted by FSDH Asset Management and Convergence, will highlight the role of blended finance in mobilizing institutional capital into alternative asset classes that meet the risk-return profile of institutional investors in line with their fiduciary duty, whilst at the same time achieving development impact.

The session will begin with the first principles of blended finance, with a particular emphasis on how this approach can create investable opportunities for institutional investors. This will be followed by a presentation of FSDH’s strategic initiatives and remarks by three organizations  – each highlighting their respective initiatives that are using blended finance mechanisms to direct capital to high-impact assets, supported by institutional investors.

Ultimately, the goal of this session is to facilitate knowledge exchange among industry stakeholders and take stock of additional support to scale domestic capital’s participation in driving Nigeria’s economic transformation. 

*This event is by invitation only. If you are interested in participating, please contact support@convergence.finance to express your interest.*

The Role of Blended Finance in Supporting Nigeria's Economic Transformation

Join Convergence and FSDH Asset Management to explore the role of blended finance in mobilizing institutional capital into alternative asset classes that meet the risk-return profile of institutional investors in line with their fiduciary duty, whilst at the same time achieving development impact.

Blended Finance for Nigeria's Economic Transformation

ISA 2026 Banner 16X9

Impact Summit America is a highly curated, invitation-only conference for institutional investors and asset owners, bringing together leading thought leaders and practitioners in the impact investing space. As an official partner event of Climate Week NYC, the Summit provides a trusted
platform for North American investors to exchange insights, build connections, and explore how institutional capital can accelerate solutions to the world’s most pressing environmental and societal challenges while delivering financial returns. 

The Summit offers practical tools, strategies, and peer-driven conversations to help investors increase their impact allocations and scale positive outcomes for people and the planet.

*Convergence is an Industry Partner for the 2026 Summit.*

Impact Summit America 2026

Impact Summit America is a highly curated, invitation-only conference for institutional investors and asset owners, bringing together leading thought leaders and practitioners in the impact investing space.


Institutional Investor Executive Roundtable

__Tuesday, September 22, 2026, 8:30AM-10:30AM ET__

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This invitation-only institutional investor expert panel and interactive dialogue will bring together senior leaders from asset managers, banks, insurers, institutional investors, and market practitioners to discuss how to accelerate institutional investment in emerging markets.

Through a moderated discussion and facilitated roundtables, participants will explore proven investment models, market barriers, blended finance, and the financial structures and market infrastructure needed to mobilize private capital at scale. Discussion themes will include:
- Proven models that have successfully attracted institutional capital into emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs)
- Barriers to scaling and replicating successful investment structures
- Market infrastructure and financial tools needed to increase institutional allocations
- How blended finance can evolve to better facilitate institutional participation
- Priorities for collective action to accelerate investment over the coming years

 

*This event is __by invitation only__, and limited to approximately 30–40 senior representatives to encourage an open and highly interactive discussion. If you are a senior representative from an institutional investor, asset manager, bank, insurer, or similar organization and are interested in participating, please contact support@convergence.finance to express your interest.*

Institutional Investor Expert Panel & Interactive Dialogue

Join us for an institutional investor expert panel and interactive dialogue which will bring together senior leaders, from asset managers, banks, insurers, institutional investors, and market practitioners to discuss how to accelerate institutional investment in emerging markets.

Convergence Member Breakfast & Networking in New York

__Monday, September 21, 2026 at 8:30AM - 10:00AM ET__

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Join us for Convergence's Member Breakfast & Networking in New York on the sidelines of Climate Week New York, hosted in partnership with Natixis Investment Managers at Natixis CIB Americas Headquarters. The event will include remarks from Convergence and Natixis Investment Managers, including an exclusive preview from Convergence on the State of Blended Finance report, as well as other highlights.

The Convergence Market Insights team will deliver the latest briefing on the climate blended finance market, featuring an exclusive preview of the upcoming State of Blended Finance report, along with highlights from other recent and forthcoming publications in Convergence’s knowledge suite. Following the briefing, enjoy a dedicated hour of networking with the Convergence team and a global community of practitioners in blended finance, leaders collectively working to mobilize billions toward sustainable investment in emerging markets.

*All participants will be subject to a security pre-screening, and a valid government-issued ID will be required for entry.*

Join us for Convergence’s Member Breakfast & Networking in New York, hosted in partnership with Citi.

Member Training: Obtaining Investment-Grade Ratings for Blended Finance Vehicles

__Tuesday, September 15, 2026, 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM__

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Join Convergence for a virtual member training exploring how blended finance vehicles can achieve investment-grade credit ratings and what this means for attracting institutional capital.

As blended finance vehicles continue to mature, an increasing number of fund managers are pursuing external credit ratings to broaden their investor base and access larger pools of private capital. Achieving an investment-grade rating can enhance credibility, improve marketability, and unlock investment from institutional investors, but the process requires careful structuring and a clear understanding of rating agency methodologies.

This session will begin with a fireside chat featuring Moody's, providing insights into its analytical approach to assessing blended finance vehicles, recent developments in its rating methodology. The discussion will be followed by case study presentations from AgDevCo and ResponsAbility, offering practical lessons from organizations that have navigated the rating process.

*Please note this training is exclusively for Convergence members. If your organization is not currently a Convergence member and you would like to attend, you may purchase a seat for USD 100. To register, please contact us at training@convergence.finance*

Join Convergence for a virtual member training exploring how blended finance vehicles can achieve investment-grade credit ratings and what this means for attracting institutional capital.

Obtaining Investment-Grade Ratings for Blended Vehicles

acs cycle5 infosession web

We invite you to join us virtually for an information session on the [Asia Climate Solutions (ACS) Design Grant](https://www.convergence.finance/accelerator/acs).

The ACS Design Grant awards feasibility study and proof-of-concept grants for the design and launch of innovative blended finance solutions that mobilize private capital to sectors critical for climate transition and resilience in developing markets in Asia.

This funding cycle will support blended finance solutions that strengthen climate-resilient agriculture and/or other nature-based solutions. The solutions should leverage blended finance to mobilize local public, private, and philanthropic capital to scale climate mitigation and adaptation initiatives benefiting local communities across Southeast Asia. 

Register for the webinar to:
- Learn more about Convergence’s Blended Finance Accelerator Program and the ACS Design Grant
- Gain insight into how to apply, grant eligibility, and evaluation criteria
- Get your questions answered, and more

This funding cycle is supported by the Australian Government through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

The ACS Design Grant is now open. The deadline to submit concept notes is __September 28, 2026 at 9:00PM ET/September 29, 2026 at 9:00AM SGT__. Visit the [ACS Design Grant page](https://www.convergence.finance/accelerator/acs) to learn more and apply.

Asia Climate Solutions Design Grant: Info Session

Join us virtually to gain insight into the application process for the Asia Climate Solutions Design Grant

Learn about the Asia Climate Solutions Design Grant

NSEroundtable sept26 web

__Wednesday, September 9, 2026 at 8:30AM - 11:30AM EAT__

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Join Convergence and Nairobi Securities Exchange for a breakfast event in Nairobi highlighting the role of blended finance in mobilizing institutional capital into high-impact listed products that meet the risk-return profile of institutional investors in line with their fiduciary duty, whilst at the same time achieving development impact. The goal of this roundtable is to facilitate knowledge exchange among industry stakeholders and take stock of additional support required to scale private capital for high-impact solutions via capital markets.

*This event is by invitation only. If you are interested in participating, please contact support@convergence.finance to express your interest.*

The Role of Blended Finance in Supporting Listed Capital Markets Products

Join Convergence and Nairobi Securities Exchange to explore the role of blended finance in mobilizing institutional capital into high-impact listed products that meet the risk-return profile of institutional investors in line with their fiduciary duty, whilst at the same time achieving development impact.

Blended Finance for Listed Capital Markets Products

Blended Finance in Action: Scaling Climate Adaptation and Resilience

__Tuesday, September 8, 2026, 2:00PM - 4:30PM (Hong Kong time)__

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As part of Hong Kong Green Week, Convergence, the Hong Kong Green Finance Association (HKGFA), and the Sustainable Finance Initiative Hong Kong (SFi) are hosting “Blended Finance in Action: Scaling Climate Adaptation and Resilience” workshop in Hong Kong.

This multi-stakeholder workshop will convene investors, financial institutions, development finance institutions (DFIs), philanthropies, policymakers, practitioners, and ecosystem partners for a solutions-oriented discussion on how blended finance can scale investment in climate adaptation and resilience across Asia.

The session will feature regional insights on blended finance trends, practitioner-led discussions unpacking the anatomy of real blended finance transactions, and interactive roundtables on climate adaptation and climate-resilient infrastructure. Participants will examine the commercial viability of key sectors, bankability constraints, catalytic capital needs, and emerging opportunities across priority subsectors.

The workshop aims to identify practical next steps for collaboration, strengthen Hong Kong’s role as a regional blended finance hub, and support the development of a stronger pipeline of adaptation and resilience transactions.

As seating is limited, attendance is by invitation only and restricted to one representative per organisation to ensure a balanced and diverse discussion. If you are interested in attending, please contact asia@convergence.finance.

As part of Hong Kong Green Week, Convergence, the Hong Kong Green Finance Association (HKGFA), and the Sustainable Finance Initiative Hong Kong (SFi) is hosting “Blended Finance in Action: Scaling Climate Adaptation and Resilience” workshop in Hong Kong.

Blended Finance in Action: Climate Adaptation & Resilience

Virtual Launch: Technical Cooperation Approaches for Mobilizing Private Capital in Developing Countries

__Thursday, September 3, 2026, 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM__

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Join us virtually on Thursday, September 3, 2026 at 9:00 AM Eastern Time for the launch of a new report. The webinar will cover trends, insights, and recommendations from our report, Technical Cooperation Approaches for Mobilizing Private Capital in Developing Countries.

With the development community facing a decline in official development assistance resources, understanding how technical cooperation can improve conditions for private investment in developing countries is critical. The imperative to do more with increasingly scarce concessional resources has never been greater.

Produced with the support of GIZ, the German agency for technical cooperation, the report explores Technical Assistance and Technical Cooperation approaches from the diverse perspectives of providers, recipients, and implementers. In addition to presenting highlights from the report, the webinar will feature a panel discussion elaborating on the findings and sharing examples of how technical cooperation programs can put these findings into practice, mobilizing private capital in ways that amplify development impact on the ground.

Featured speakers:
- __Mahmud Naqi__, Senior Policy Officer, Global Affairs Canada
- __Lasitha Perera__, CEO and Co-Founder, The Development Guarantee Group
- __Regina Vasarais__, Manager, Convergence
- __Ilsa Weinstein-Wright__, Senior Associate, Market Insights, Convergence
- __Nicholas Zelenczuk__, Manager, Market Insights, Convergence

Join us virtually on Thursday, September 3, 2026 at 9:00 AM Eastern Time for the launch of a new report. The webinar will cover trends, insights, and recommendations from our report, Technical Cooperation Approaches for Mobilizing Private Capital in Developing Countries.

Technical Cooperation Approaches

Deal Connect: July 2026

__Wednesday, July 15, 2026, 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM ET__

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Join Convergence for an informative webinar that will connect you to a selection of blended finance investment in emerging markets. During this interactive session, Convergence members will share an overview of their investment opportunities that are listed on our live deal platform. This is a great opportunity to explore new and unique transactions and learn from developments in the broader blended finance ecosystem.

During the session, we will present two opportunities:

__EG Economic Empowerment Fund L.P__ 

The EG Economic Empowerment Fund L.P. is a USD 100 million private-debt fund investing in climate adaptation across East Africa and Southern African Development Community (SADC). The fund offers flexible mezzanine debt to growth-stage SMEs, supporting expansion while advancing climate adaptation, job creation, intra-Africa trade, and women and youth inclusion.

__Kuali Fund__ 

The Kuali Fund, managed by GAWA Capital, invests in financial institutions and climate-solution providers to expand access to climate adaptation and resilience finance for vulnerable communities, smallholder farmers, microentrepreneurs, and SMEs. Kuali focuses primarily on Latin America, with additional investment activity in India.

Join Convergence for our next Deal Connect exploring EG Economic Empowerment Fund L.P, and Kuali Fund.

Deal Connect

Founded in the Netherlands in 1965, SNV is a global development partner with a long-term, locally embedded presence across countries in Asia and Africa. Working across agri-food, energy and water systems, SNV strengthens capacities and catalyzes partnerships with governments, businesses, civil society and communities to enable more inclusive, resilient and sustainable development.

We spoke with Simon O'Connell, CEO of SNV about how they engage in blended finance, gaps and opportunities they see in the blended finance space, the impact of global diminishment in ODA in SNV’s work, and more.

__How does SNV engage in blended finance?__

We see blended finance as a means to accelerate sustainable development outcomes by helping promising businesses and financial institutions become investment-ready, rather than as an end in itself.
Our role is to bridge the gap between development and investment by combining technical expertise, a long-term local presence, and trusted partnerships with governments, businesses, investors, and financial institutions.
We work across the investment continuum, from strengthening entrepreneurship ecosystems and enabling environments to providing origination, technical assistance, and de-risking support that helps mobilize private capital into frontier markets.
In doing so, we connect local knowledge with global investment networks to help address the “missing middle”, where many high-impact enterprises struggle to access appropriate finance.

__Can you describe a blended finance transaction that SNV has been involved in? In what capacity did you participate?__

A good example of our work in blended finance is our role in the €1.3 billion [Dutch Fund for Climate and Development (DFCD)](https://www.snv.org/project/dutch-fund-climate-and-development-dfcd) which is focused on climate resilience investments in agri-food, forestry, nature,and water in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In DFCD, SNV together with World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF-NL) manages the €70 million Origination Facility, working closely with blended finance investment facilities managed by Dutch entrepreneurial development bank (FMO) and Climate Fund Managers. The Origination Facility provides origination and pre-investment technical assistance services to companies with the potential to deliver measurable climate adaptation, mitigation and development outcomes, helping strengthen both their investment readiness and climate impact case. Once investment-ready and de-risked, projects can progress to DFCD investors as well as other associated investors. 

An example of a project supported through the DFCD Origination Facility is Phuc Sinh, one of Vietnam’s leading coffee companies, which was seeking investment to expand its climate-resilient, sustainable coffee-processing operations. SNV worked with the company over a two-year period to strengthen its investment readiness by improving its environmental, social and governance (ESG) systems, refining its business model, conducting technical studies, and reducing investment risks.

Throughout this process, we also helped align the company’s commercial ambitions with investor requirements, ensuring that both the financial and development cases for the investment were robust.

This support helped unlock a [$15 million investment from FMO](https://www.thedfcd.com/news/phuc-sinh-secures-fmo-investment-to-scale-climate-resilient-coffee-in-vietnam/), enabling Phuc Sinh to build a new processing facility while strengthening more resilient, traceable, and sustainable coffee value chains. The investment is expected to lead to around 3,300 hectares of farmland being sustainably managed and benefit more than 10,000 people.

__How does SNV measure the impact of its blended finance activities?__

We measure success through both the finance we help mobilize and de-risk and the long-term development outcomes that investment creates. Financial indicators include the number of businesses reaching investment readiness, private capital mobilized, and progression along the investment continuum.

These investments are then assessed against development outcomes, which vary by investment but typically include improvements in climate resilience, food security, livelihoods, biodiversity, job creation, and inclusive economic growth. We also recognize that measuring adaptation and resilience remains a significant challenge in blended finance, and we continue to strengthen approaches that better capture these outcomes alongside financial performance.

Alongside this, we are increasingly focused on demonstrating how catalytic grants and technical assistance create lasting systemic change by strengthening businesses and markets rather than delivering only short-term project outputs.

For example, through the DFCD Origination Facility, SNV has supported 30 enterprises across 11 countries, with 14 projects progressing to the investment stage. The facility has mobilized €81 million in private finance to date, with a further €124 million projected. Across the wider DFCD, the projected mobilization ratio is approximately €10 in private investment for every €1 of grant and technical assistance support.

__Has the global diminishment in Official development assistance (ODA) affected SNV’s work? How?__

The changing ODA landscape has reinforced the need to use scarce public resources both more intentionally and catalytically, ensuring that grants are deployed where they can have the greatest impact.

In many contexts, we see grants can be used to help prepare businesses and institutions for investment by reducing risk, strengthening capacity, and unlocking much larger flows of private finance. The diminishment of ODA is, in general, a real concern given the scale of global challenges, and whilst SNV continues to manage a robust and diverse portfolio of projects and initiatives, we are not immune to the decline in overall funding across the development sector.
At the same time, shrinking aid budgets have highlighted that no single organization or funding source can bridge the financing gap alone. Stronger partnerships across governments, development organizations, investors, financial institutions, and philanthropy are becoming more important than ever.

This thinking underpins SNV's work on the impact capital continuum, which aims to create stronger connections between grants, technical assistance, concessional finance, and commercial investment, rather than treating them as separate financing instruments.

Ultimately, we believe the opportunity is not simply to mobilize more capital, but to build a more connected financing ecosystem that enables promising businesses to progress from innovation to scale without falling into the “missing middle.”

__As a non-profit in the blended finance space, what are some interesting or unexpected challenges SNV has had to navigate?__

One of the biggest challenges is continuity. Too often, businesses receive valuable grant support but struggle to access the next stage of finance because different funding instruments and programmes operate in isolation.

Another challenge is working with partners that have very different objectives, timelines, and risk appetites, which means that building trust, relationships, and alignment is often just as important as structuring the transaction itself.

Donors and philanthropic foundations often seek systems change, whereas investors are much more focused on individual transactions. However, both can often be achieved at the same time with targeted effort. As a non-profit, our role is often to act as a trusted intermediary, connecting commercial investment with meaningful development outcomes.

In addition, in frontier markets, investment readiness frequently depends on strengthening governance, ESG systems, and business fundamentals before financing can proceed. Measuring outcomes such as resilience, adaptation, and inclusion can also be more challenging than measuring financial performance alone, despite their importance to long-term impact.

__As an organization working to transform agri-food, energy, and water systems, what gaps or opportunities do you see in the blended finance space?__

We believe the greatest opportunity lies in creating stronger pathways across the investment continuum so that promising businesses can move more efficiently from innovation to commercial scale.

It is often argued that even in frontier markets, there is enough capital, but not enough investable opportunity. Our experience, however, demonstrates that there is significant unmet investable business potential. Realizing this potential, however, requires origination, technical assistance, as well as handholding and coaching. The demand for such services is much higher than the current supply, meaning significant investment potential remains unrealized.

We also see considerable potential in working more closely with local financial institutions, which are well placed to serve underserved businesses but often need additional risk-sharing mechanisms and technical support.

Similarly, stronger collaboration between development organizations, governments, and investors could reduce duplication and make blended finance more efficient and scalable. Convergence and other sector-support providers can help by making blended finance more transparent, sharing best practices, setting standards, and promoting benchmarking.

We believe blended finance has an important role to play in breaking down the silos between sectors such as agri-food, energy, and water. Many of the most pressing challenges are interconnected, and financing approaches that work across sectors have the potential to deliver greater impact and long-term value.

Finally, there is growing recognition that blended finance should better value outcomes such as climate adaptation, biodiversity, and resilience alongside more established financial and climate metrics, not just for moral reasons, but also because of the strong economic and business case for doing so.

__How do you see SNV’s blended finance activities evolving in the future?__

We expect our blended finance work to become increasingly central to our overall work, with a stronger focus on building connections across the impact capital continuum.

As this evolves, partnerships will become even more important, bringing together governments, development organizations, investors, philanthropies, and the private sector to mobilize capital at a greater scale.

We also see growing demand for origination and technical assistance as core components of blended finance, helping businesses become investment-ready in increasingly complex operating environments.

Throughout this, SNV's comparative advantage will continue to be our ability to combine our longstanding context-driven approaches and local presence with technical expertise and trusted partnerships, enabling us to connect locally led solutions with global sources of capital.


Read our Member Spotlight with SNV to learn about how they engage in blended finance, gaps and opportunities they see in the blended finance space, the impact of global diminishment in ODA in SNV’s work, and more.

SNV Member Spotlight with Simon O'Connell

Magnitude Global Finance (MGF) is a women-owned boutique sustainable finance and investment advisory firm. Their focus is on helping their clients design investments, access capital, and finance the transition to a low-carbon, nature positive economy. MGF works across donors, development finance institutions (DFIs), investors, fund managers, governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and enterprises to structure and mobilize capital for climate, nature, and development outcomes. 

We spoke with Amanda Lonsdale, CEO at MGF about their approach to blended finance, impact measurement, how they apply a gender lens, challenges they have faced in the space, and more.

__What are your key priorities and what are you focusing on right now?__

At our core we’re translators, we sit between the people with capital and the people building solutions on the ground, and we help them better understand each other. Today, much of our work focuses on climate adaptation and resilience, nature-based solutions, energy, sustainable agriculture, and biodiversity. Practically, that means helping clients build pipelines that are investable, structuring blended finance vehicles, and connecting capital to the opportunities that can deliver both a return and real impact.

Sometimes we’re helping create the conditions for investment, for example, conducting market sounding, sourcing investable pipeline, and identifying market gaps and opportunities. Other times we’re in the weeds on a specific transaction, helping structure and execute it. The common thread is finding ways to move capital into impactful solutions.

__Tell us about your approach to blended finance and how it has evolved.__

We always start with a simple set of questions: what problem are we trying to solve, why hasn’t it already been solved (i.e., what are the real and perceived risks), and what is the simplest solution? We don’t start with a particular capital structure or instrument—we seek to understand the barriers to investment and the best way to overcome them, reserving the financial structuring for risks that can’t be mitigated otherwise. Once we have a clear picture of the risks and opportunities, everything else flows from that.

Over time, we have become much more focused on ensuring concessional capital is used strategically and efficiently. We look first to see if we can de-risk the project or instrument in some other way—through better pipeline work, market validation, better data, or smarter transaction design. Deploying catalytic capital is reserved for the residual risk. With concessional and donor capital getting scarcer, every dollar needs to be doing real work.

We’ve also gotten better at seeing where development objectives and capital market realities diverge. We look to transform projects and funds in new markets, sectors, or geographies into familiar structures that are understood by more mainstream investors. In addition to structuring, we layer in impact elements to ensure alignment with financial objectives. Complexity or innovation for its own sake isn’t a virtue. Some of the best structures are tried-and-true approaches applied in new contexts. In fact, we tell our clients to limit their “innovation” to one element of their fund or instrument. If they’re going into a new market, they should use a conventional structure and invest in familiar things – funds that are overly complex structurally, focused in complicated markets, and investing in esoteric sectors have an uphill battle in terms of getting investors comfortable with multiple layers of risk. Keeping things simple is a much better recipe for success.

__Can you share some examples of blended finance transactions or projects you have supported and how?__

The Investment Mobilisation Collaboration Alliance (IMCA) is probably the best example. It's a coalition of donor and development partners trying to mobilize private capital to support a range of climate priorities including through the most recent Adaptation Finance Window for Africa. MGF is the engine behind it — we did the market sounding, designed the procurement in cooperation with the participating Nordic donors and DFIs, ran the competitive selection, and managed and sat on the evaluation committee. It was structured mainly as a first-loss grant facility, so we are also working to do some matchmaking to fill in the other blended finance pieces the selected funds need.

Another example from IMCA is the responsAbility Asia Climate Fund, a $500 million fund focused on energy transition in emerging markets. We structured and executed a first-loss junior tranche through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)'s Climate Finance for Development Accelerator, which helped bring in institutional investors who had no prior exposure to emerging market energy transition deals. That kind of de-risking, translating between development and commercial finance, is at the heart of what we do. We're also the structuring advisor for several instruments through the Climate Policy Initiative’s Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance, helping selected instruments optimize their capital stacks and keep both complexity and concessional capital to a minimum.

We’re also working more in the nature finance space. With the [Mangrove Breakthrough](https://www.mangrovebreakthrough.com/) we are seeking pilot transactions that mobilize finance for mangrove-positive projects. With a family office, we're building a pipeline of landscape-level blended finance instruments across Asia that combine nature-based and market-based approaches. Across Africa we continue to support nature-based carbon projects and platforms, making sure the financial models actually protect the rights of the communities and investors involved.

__What are some lessons you have learned so far about measuring the impact and evaluating the success of blended finance transactions?__

The biggest lesson is that impact measurement needs to be rigorous, but also realistic and suited to what is being measured.

The impact investing world rightly cares a lot about measurement and accountability, but we've seen firsthand how messy and burdensome that can get — especially for smaller or first-time fund managers who don't have a big back office. Every investor wants their own bespoke metrics, and that adds up fast in terms of time and cost for funds and their portfolio companies and projects. We’re currently working with the Investors Resilience Challenge, an initiative championed by 16 DFIs and private investor signatories to create a common set of criteria around adaptation and resilience to develop a common understanding of what qualifies as an adaptation or resilience investment, along with a common approach to measuring it. 

In terms of evaluating the success of transactions, we've learned you have to hold two things in your head at once: the numbers and the actual impact. It's tempting to chase big capital mobilization figures, but if the capital isn't really landing where it needs to, the fund isn't well positioned to deploy it, or the catalytic capital isn’t really needed, that erodes the credibility of the whole exercise. So we're always asking: where is this catalytic capital actually going, is it needed, and who's really benefiting?

It can also be difficult to manage the success of a blended finance investment due to the timing mismatch between your typical catalytic capital facility and the life of a fund or project. Donors and grant facilities tend to work in one-to-five-year cycles, but the funds they help launch often run ten years or more, especially in nature-based work — we often joke that you can't rush trees. By the time a fund is generating real, measurable outcomes on the ground, the facility that got it off the ground has usually already wound down. So measuring success means looking both at the near-term and at where things are headed over the long run.

__What are the recurring themes or challenges clients come to MGF for support with?__

A lot of clients come to us because they have a genuinely compelling impact story that they want to turn into something investable. We see this frequently in adaptation, biodiversity, landscape restoration, and regenerative agriculture — areas where the social and environmental case may be obvious, but the commercial pathway isn't.  We work with many clients who have great ideas, great networks, and real track records on the ground, but need support finding the financing piece to make their concept a reality. With the aid landscape changing so much, that's become even more urgent.

Clients often use us as a thought partner — someone who will tell them honestly whether what they're proposing will work. We're not afraid to push back, point out blind spots, and help refine the idea before too much time or money is committed.

The specifics vary by sector — in adaptation finance it's often about reconciling impact ambitions with commercial viability; in nature finance it's usually the gap between strong projects with nowhere to go for capital and investors who have capital but no visibility into how to deploy it. Underneath most of it is the same issue: it's rarely a lack of capital, rather a lack of connection between the capital and the opportunity.

__How does MGF apply a gender lens in its blended finance work? At what stage are gender considerations typically discussed?__

For us, gender has to be there from day one — in how we staff a project, how we write proposals, and how we advise clients — not bolted on later.

With IMCA, for example, gender runs through the whole process. Asset managers applying to the facility have to explain how gender shows up in their investment thesis, not just whether there's a woman on the board. We also look at it at the transaction level — how individual deals are structured and what their gender impact actually looks like. We lean on standards like the 2X Criteria where it's useful, and we're also interested in the flip side of that question: why investees themselves want to be 2X qualified in the first place and what the business case looks like from where they sit.

Sometimes this gets very concrete. On a national climate finance policy project for Mozambique, we recommended explicitly that the steering committee be gender balanced. On a Green Climate Fund (GCF) concept for Somalia, we found specific points in the design where we could push for more gender equity, even when that meant navigating real cultural sensitivities. We also helped them design a blended finance solution to get loan products to hundreds of thousands of women entrepreneurs across fragile states.

Our work spans many sectors and geographies, but what stays consistent is the belief that gender belongs in the strategy and governance of a deal, not as a box to check at the end.

__Are there any interesting or unexpected challenges MGF has faced in the blended finance space so far?__

One challenge that comes up frequently is the gap between ambition and how investors actually make decisions. Stakeholders are often genuinely eager to solve a real problem but don't fully understand how capital allocators think, while investors may be interested in a theme like adaptation or nature but have no visibility into what's actually happening on the ground.

A more subtle version of that is the tension between facilities that are designed top-down versus ones that are built in response to the market. When a donor or DFI sets a facility up around a fixed geography, sector, or gender requirement without real market consultation you end up with one of two outcomes: the facility doesn't attract the funds it was meant to serve, or worse, funds reverse-engineer themselves just to qualify. We've seen this pattern repeatedly, and it's the reason real market sounding isn't optional — it's the difference between something that works and something that doesn't.

We've also seen a lot of overengineering. Some structures get more complicated without actually addressing the underlying barrier to investment — it's almost like people have heard every blended finance term and want to use all of them: a first loss, a guarantee, concessional equity, and concessional debt, without a clear reason for each.

The funding landscape itself keeps shifting under our feet. As traditional sources of concessional capital get squeezed, we're seeing every kind of organization — private sector, philanthropies, DFIs, NGOs — move toward blended finance, which makes for some interesting new approaches but also a lot of noise.

One thing that has genuinely surprised us is how big a knowledge gap still exists on the investor side. Some of the largest institutions with real capital to deploy have decision-makers who have simply never come across tools like nature bonds or debt-for-nature swaps. These aren't exotic — they're well-documented, replicable mechanisms. But if the people sitting on the capital have never heard of them, the gap between available tools and deployed capital stays wide.

__What have the different types of stakeholders that you've worked with looked for in blended finance deals? What sectors have been of the most interest?__

Part of what makes our work interesting is how broad our stakeholder universe really is — fund managers, DFIs, bilateral and multilateral donors, family offices, foundations, commercial banks, project developers, NGOs, civil society groups, local governments. Each one comes to blended finance with a different set of constraints.

DFIs and donors generally want to know their concessional capital is doing real work, not just substituting for commercial capital that would have shown up anyway. Fund managers and commercial investors care about risk-adjusted returns and whether the fund is actually viable to run day to day. Family offices and foundations sit in an interesting middle ground — they're private capital, but more flexible on returns and more willing to go where purely commercial money won't. We're seeing more interest from that group, and we think it's underused for the kinds of markets we work in.

On sectors, renewable energy transition still draws the most interest. Agriculture and landscape finance remain more difficult. They are harder to make bankable and less familiar to most investors, but that difficulty is exactly where the blended finance opportunity lies. Nature-based solutions such as mangroves, forests, seaweed, and biodiversity more broadly are an area of growing interest, even though there's still a lot of work to translate conservation goals into something private capital can actually invest in at scale.

__How do you see MGF's blended finance activities evolving in the future?__

We think the next chapter of blended finance comes down to building stronger connections between the people who need capital and the people deploying it. For us, that means evolving along two tracks.

The first is doubling down on our role as translators and honest brokers as the people who can sit across the table from a DFI, a first-time fund manager, an NGO, and a commercial bank and help all of them understand each other well enough to get to a transaction. If anything, the demand for that role is growing as things get more complex. We're especially interested in helping unlock new sources of catalytic capital (e.g., local institutional investors, family offices, foundations, pension funds) who are looking for a practical way into climate and nature finance.

The second track is getting closer to the financial vehicles themselves. We've built up a lot of expertise in how funds are structured and what works, and the natural next step is to be more than advisors — to be co-architects, maybe even co-owners. Whether that's an early-stage catalytic fund for nature-based carbon, a blended finance platform for a specific landscape, or a vehicle built around a particular adaptation gap, we'd like to be more directly involved in the deals themselves.

GCF will stay central to all of this. Since USAID has shuttered and bilateral funding has pulled back, GCF has become one of the last major sources of dedicated climate finance, and there's real appetite among NGOs, DFIs, and governments to develop GCF-backed projects both through navigating accreditation and writing strong proposals. We've been supporting clients across that spectrum, and we expect it to be a meaningful growth area over the next one to three years.

We're also increasingly drawn to working with family offices and foundations directly to help them think strategically about deploying capital into this space. They tend to be nimbler than the big institutional players, more willing to take on risk in pursuit of impact and genuinely looking for opportunities in markets where we already have deep relationships. Helping them build a strategy, find credible opportunities, and deploy capital is a natural extension of what we do — and honestly, it's where some of the most exciting near-term potential is.

Ultimately, we want to help move the market beyond one-off transactions and toward something more like a real investment ecosystem — better pipelines, more diverse capital, financing models that can be replicated across geographies. The challenges in climate, nature, and development are too big for any one player to solve alone. We see our job as bringing the right people together and turning good ideas into real, fundable deals.

Read our Member Spotlight with MGF to learn about their approach to blended finance, impact measurement, how they apply a gender lens, challenges they have faced in the space, and more.

Magnitude Global Finance Member Spotlight

Magnitude Global Finance Member Spotlight with Amanda Lonsdale

British International Investment (BII) is the UK’s development finance institution (DFI). Established in 1948, they invest to deliver productive, sustainable, and inclusive growth in emerging and developing economies. Their mission is to help solve the biggest global development challenges by investing patient, flexible capital to support private sector growth and innovation. BII currently partners with over 1,600 businesses in emerging economies and has total assets of £9.9 billion.

We spoke with Michael Sanni, Investment Director, Financial Services Group and Christopher Dartsmith, Investment Manager, Capital Solutions about BII’s 5-year strategy, their new report on scaling blended finance, their work with the Emerging Markets and Developing Economies (EMDE) Investor Taskforce, and more.

__Tell us about your new [5-year strategy](https://www.bii.co.uk/en/strategy-2026-31/). What are your goals and key priorities?__

Our new 2026–31 strategy responds to a changing global environment, with increased pressure on public finances, climate urgency, and widening development financing gaps. It sharpens our focus on where our capital and expertise can have the greatest impact to help markets work better for the people they serve. 

To achieve this, we’re focusing on three strategic shifts: 
1. __Delivering market-level impact__ by addressing the barriers that prevent markets from functioning effectively and supporting changes that last beyond individual investments.
2. __Deepening our commitment to frontier markets and least developed countries__, where access to capital remains most constrained but where investment can have the greatest development impact.
3. __Accelerating private capital mobilization__, using our capital, expertise, and partnerships to attract significantly more commercial investment into priority sectors and markets.

__What is your approach to blended finance and how has it evolved?__

BII views blended finance as a critical enabler for market level impact, frontier market development, and private capital mobilization. Our approach has evolved from deal-by-deal applications to a more strategic, programmatic deployment of catalytic capital in service of three objectives:
- Addressing market failures and financing gaps in priority sectors, including financial inclusion, e-mobility, agricultural value chain solutions, energy access, and circular economy.
- Using catalytic capital to drive growth of real economy businesses, support financial services, and enable critical infrastructure development in frontier markets, enhancing economic resilience.
- Mobilizing private capital at scale through blended finance funds and other intermediated structures that leverage catalytic capital to de-risk relevant opportunities in EMDEs.

Our catalytic capital toolkit consists of two pools of capital, Catalyst and Kinetic. Both Catalyst and Kinetic allow BII to pursue deeper impact through a higher risk tolerance than traditional core DFI/multilateral development bank capital.

The primary distinction between Catalyst and Kinetic is their position on the risk spectrum, with Kinetic having a higher risk appetite than Catalyst. In the new strategy period, we have aligned both these tools more closely and will deploy them as a coordinated toolkit, combining capital and technical assistance (TA) to address market barriers and mobilize private capital at scale.

__In April 2025 you released a report featuring [Practical guidance to scale blended finance](https://www.bii.co.uk/en/news-insight/insight/articles/practical-guidance-to-scale-blended-finance/) and you’ve recently released a second report building on that guidance, what prompted BII to develop these reports and how do they support and develop the global blended finance market?__

Despite strong growth in blended finance activity in recent years, the market for blended finance funds remains constrained by the absence of a common framework across ecosystem stakeholders, leading to complex and highly bespoke structures that are costly and time-intensive to execute. The ‘Scaling Blended Finance’ series started as a response to these constraints, to translate real world structuring practices into practical guidance, creating a shared language across DFIs, fund managers, private investors, and catalytic capital providers and improving efficiency and effectiveness in blended fund structuring.

[Scaling Blended Finance II](https://www.bii.co.uk/en/news-insight/insight/articles/scaling-blended-finance-ii-optimising-catalytic-capital-in-blended-finance-funds/), developed in partnership with Boston Consulting Group and Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, focuses on ‘mobilizing archetypes’ that are set out in the typology presented in Scaling Blended Finance I and presents a practical framework linking commercial investor constraints to different concessional instruments and their respective sizing considerations. In doing so, it helps answer three critical questions: why concessional capital is needed, what form it should take, and how much is required to bridge the gap between the binding constraints of commercial investors and an asset pool’s risk-return profile. The report aims to provide the market with a practical guide to optimizing concessionality in mobilization structures.

We hope that this work will help reduce structuring complexity and timelines, create a shared language among stakeholders, and support the scaling and replication of mobilization structures. We, along with our partners, are planning practitioner-focused engagements throughout the year to continue to build on the best practices set out in the report and translate them into real world action.

__Through the EMDE Investor Taskforce, you regularly engage with institutional investors, such as pension funds and insurance companies. What have you learned about their expectations towards blended finance deals?__

Effective mobilization structures start with a clear understanding of investor constraints, including regulatory requirements, mandate guardrails, asset allocation frameworks, limited emerging markets expertise, and reliance on ratings or external risk metrics. For some investors, these constraints can be binding, for example, matching adjustment requirements for UK life insurers. Our [Scaling Blended Finance II](https://www.bii.co.uk/en/news-insight/insight/articles/scaling-blended-finance-ii-optimising-catalytic-capital-in-blended-finance-funds/) report sets out these constraints by investor type and maps them against the concessional mechanisms that can help address them, including downside protection, return enhancement, cashflow and liquidity enhancement, and volatility reduction. The key lesson is that mobilization starts with understanding the specific constraints of the investors you are trying to attract. Different investor groups face different barriers and there is no universal blended finance structure that works for all of them. Concessional capital is therefore most effective when it is targeted and tailored to address the binding constraints of a defined investor segment, while remaining pragmatic and flexible in how concessionality is structured to bridge risk-return gaps.

__Can you share some specific blended finance transactions you have been involved in and what role you played?__

BII’s [capital toolkit](https://www.bii.co.uk/en/about/our-company/investment-portfolios/) (Growth, Catalyst, Kinetic, and BII Plus TA) is designed to sit across the risk spectrum of development finance. This enables BII to take on various roles in blended finance transactions, i.e. we can act as catalytic investors, anchor investors, and/or senior investors. 

Some recent blended finance fund transactions that BII has been involved in include:
- In December 2025, BII invested $40 million in the junior tranche of the Allianz Credit Emerging Markets Fund, helping reduce volatility and mobilize a target of $850 million of private capital for emerging market credit if the fund achieves its target size of $1 billion. The fund supports Paris Agreement-aligned climate finance.
- In May 2026, BII committed $30 million to the junior tranche of BlackRock’s Industrial Transformation Programme under Singapore’s FAST-P initiative, with the aim of mobilizing commercial capital for decarbonization and transition opportunities in Southeast Asia. The investment supports energy and industrial decarbonization projects, aligns with BII’s climate and mobilization strategy, and marks BII’s second FAST-P commitment after the Pentagreen-managed Green Investment Partnership.
 

__What have you learned about measuring the impact and evaluating the success of blended finance transactions?__

Measuring the success of blended finance transactions requires looking beyond mobilization alone. Mobilization ratios are important, particularly for structures that crowd in private capital at scale, but they only provide a partial picture of success. Ultimately, we assess blended finance transactions against the same core objectives as any other investment: their contribution to productive, sustainable, and inclusive development. BII’s impact framework provides the foundation for this assessment, helping us to understand who benefits, what outcomes are delivered, the scale of those outcomes, and the extent to which our investment was needed to achieve them. Our [Impact Score](https://assets.bii.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/24121022/British-International-Investment-Impact-Score-2022-26.pdf) and evaluation work help us assess these outcomes both at an individual investment level and across the portfolio.

We have also learned that some of the most important impacts of blended finance can occur after the immediate transaction. A successful blended finance structure can demonstrate a new financing model, help establish track record for an emerging asset class, crowd in new types of investors, or reduce the amount of concessional support needed over time as markets mature. As a result, we increasingly look not only at how much capital has been mobilized, but also the quality of mobilization and whether a structure is helping to build a more sustainable market for the future.

__How do you apply a gender lens in your blended finance work? At what stage are gender considerations typically discussed?__

Gender is a core strategic impact priority at BII and is embedded throughout our investment process from origination and due diligence to structuring and portfolio management. We use a gender lens to identify and prioritize investments that can expand access to finance, create more jobs, increase climate resilience, and improve other social outcomes for women. These efforts are complemented by targeted TA through BII Plus. As a result, gender considerations are typically discussed from the earliest stages of blended finance transaction, with a particular focus on financial inclusion, women’s economic participation and leadership, and ensuring women share in the benefits of the climate transition.

__How do you see BII’s blended finance activities evolving in the future?__

We expect our blended finance activities to rally around the three strategic shifts in our new strategy in the medium term: market level impact, frontier market development, and private capital mobilization. We expect to continue to learn and incorporate lessons into our blended finance operations and broader engagement with the market. Where possible, we will aim to drive standardization and simplicity in structures, acknowledging that there is an inherent tension between innovation and scale in blended finance. Flexibility in blended finance structures can be understood as a continuum, with varying degrees of bespoke structuring.

At one end are highly bespoke transactions, allowing BII to support innovative business models, technologies, and solutions that would otherwise struggle to access capital. These structures offer the greatest scope to solve for specific market or company constraints, but they are also the most time-intensive to execute and hardest to replicate.

At the other end of the spectrum are standardized structures designed for replication and scale, which are most feasible where underlying portfolios consist of assets whose risks and performance characteristics are well-understood. These large-scale mobilization structures are where we will aim for maximum simplicity and standardization, in line with the best practices set out in the Scaling Blended Finance series.

Local capital mobilization is also an important priority nested within our broader mobilization ambition and we expect to see structures that target localized mobilization coming through in this strategy period. A longer-term ambition at the core of all our blended finance activity is to reduce the reliance on concession as markets mature and deepen and risks become well understood. We envision blended finance remaining a key tool in our toolkit to drive development impact in our markets.

Read our Member Spotlight with BII to learn about their 5-year strategy, their new report on scaling blended finance, their work with the EMDE Investor Taskforce, and more.

British International Investment Member Spotlight

British International Investment Member Spotlight with Michael Sanni and Christopher Dartsmith

Setuka Partners is a mission-driven boutique advisory firm based in India. It works with responsible enterprises and investment funds to forge partnerships that involve the movement of catalytic capital (debt, equity, grants) and capacity from overseas providers to social enterprises in Asia and Africa. 

We spoke with Aman Khanna, Founder and Managing Partner at Setuka about their priorities, how they engage in blended finance, the opportunities and gaps they see for blended finance in Asia and Africa, and more.

__Can you tell us about Setuka Partners’ mandate and how it engages in blended finance?__

“Setuka” means “bridge” in Sanskrit. The name epitomizes our work in enabling the flow of capital and capacity between the “developed” and “developing” worlds. We actively work to eliminate this divide and want to see it disappear within our lifetimes.

Setuka Partners was founded with a mission to level the playing field for access to capital for entrepreneurs building impactful business models in resource-constrained environments. We do this by catalyzing capital from resource-rich environments into constructs that bring together investors with diverse risk-return expectations. This helps us break the exaggerated risk perception associated with capital-constrained environments. 

We engage in blended finance by working with entrepreneurs, financial institutions, fund managers, and other stakeholders that positively influence entrepreneurship at one end and capital allocators like Development Finance Institutions (DFIs), foundations, asset managers, and other institutions that believe in investing for returns that are not limited to only the financial metric of short-term returns at the other end. 

This engagement manifests in 3 different ways, all centered on our thesis to level the playing field for access to capital: 
- Supporting capital allocators and entrepreneurs in building enduring partnerships in blended finance constructs 
- Advising on the setup and evaluation of blended finance investments 
- Cross-pollinating learnings between emerging markets on policy and private investing in blended finance
 

__Can you walk us through a recent blended finance transaction that Setuka Partners has engaged in?__

Setuka Partners has worked closely with the United States International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) on several single-borrower guarantees. One example is a guarantee structure developed for a highly impactful and commercially successful social enterprise called Arya.ag. The group works along the value chain of agri-commodities dominated by smallholder farmers in India to drive market access, financial inclusion, and climate resilience. Arya.ag provides loans to smallholder farmers against their commodity collateral allowing them to maximize earnings and creates access to a wider range of buyers in tandem with short term embedded finance to SMEs along the agri-value chain.

Despite its success, local banks and equity investors were wary of extending the financing the company needed to expand its impactful work. Local banks stayed away, citing the lack of a sufficiently long track record, while non-banks sanctioned very small ticket sizes with outsized collateral requirements and high risk premiums.

DFC first extended a 100% guarantee to a local bank for a $10 million loan to Arya.ag’s financing entity. Within a year of this financing, the company grew from $24 million to $50 million in assets under management and from 40,000 to 600,000 farmers impacted. 

Further, DFC’s confidence in the business crowded in not only other impact investors like responsAbility but also local commercial capital providers like banks and non-banking financial companies with larger tickets and more reasonable collateral requirements. The local bank itself extended better terms for further financing to the company without the DFC guarantee.

DFC then extended an 80% guarantee to a local bank for $22.5 million of financing to the group’s embedded finance arm, which sparked exponential interest from commercial capital providers leading to not only more debt from local financing entities, but also to investments from [International Finance Corporation (IFC), Swedfund, and Proparco](https://www.ifc.org/en/pressroom/2026/ifc-and-technology-led-agri-platform-arya-ag-partner-to-boost-farmer-incomes-and-s).

The success of this transaction enabled Setuka Partners to close many other blended finance constructs with DFC and other institutions. Although the single-borrower guarantee product was onerous at first because it required aligning multiple stakeholders (i.e. borrower, guarantor, local bank, Indian borrower, local bank counsels, and DFC’s US counsel), Setuka’s management of the process until disbursement helped to establish this as an enduring product that is being replicated in India and other emerging markets. This is particularly significant in a context where several portfolio-level guarantees have remained underutilized.

__As an advisory firm working to help enterprises fundraise, what if any impacts have you seen from the recent decline in official development assistance (ODA)?__

The most direct and immediate impact has been the reduced availability of catalytic capital, in response there is a positive and a negative spillover effect on non-ODA capital flows seeking returns beyond short-term financial return metrics.

In some ways, it has been a much-needed wake-up call for custodians and allocators of private capital who may have been sitting on the sidelines, seeking more and more support from governments and philanthropic sources before taking the leap into impact investing. At Setuka Partners we have seen evidence of this in our work with a Dutch family office that has only recently started making allocations to African fund managers. Others like Trimtab, which describes itself as an “unapologetically impact-first” capital allocator backed by a few families, have been around for a while but the relevance of their work has risen significantly.

We believe it is positive that the United States is redirecting development finance toward strengthening critical supply chains, particularly the upstream stages such as critical minerals, pharmaceutical ingredients, and fertilizer production. These upstream sectors have historically attracted too little private investment, despite being essential to the success of more profitable downstream industries like renewable energy, medicines, and processed foods. Ensuring reliable and diversified access to these raw materials is critical for resilient and democratic global supply chains.

__Which of the transactions supported by Setuka have incorporated a strong gender lens? How are the gender-related impacts being measured?__

Five specific transactions that strongly address gender equality are INI Farms/Agrostar, Portea, Barka Fund, Samunnati and Avaana Capital. For example, the INI Farms/Agrostar, a social enterprise co-founded by a woman, supports smallholder farmers’ productivity through improved access to agri-inputs and raising incomes through access to organized markets. Setuka Partners worked with INI Farms/Agrostar to catalyze $15 million from a local bank supported by a DFI guarantee. 

Gender-related impacts in each of these transactions have been measured in various ways. At the company or fund level, this has included the diversity ratio (men versus women) across senior, middle, and junior management roles. At the beneficiary level, this has included assessing the participation of women in supported businesses. For example, the $94 million financing we arranged from DFC and BII for Vistaar, a Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) lender, specifically required the measurement and reporting of women’s participation within MSMEs financed by the facility. Other measures included tracking improved incomes for smallholder farmer households with relatively higher participation of women, such as dairy farming.

__From your perspective, what are the biggest opportunities and gaps in the current blended finance ecosystem, particularly in Asia and Africa?__

The key opportunity and challenge in today’s blended finance ecosystem are two sides of the same coin. The increasingly constrained availability of first loss and concessional capital presents an opportunity to demonstrate and highlight models that have already achieved significant leverage of private commercial capital. Such evidence is more relevant now than it ever was before, as the “fence-sitter” capital allocators are likely to pay greater attention to proven examples of successful blended finance structures than they did when concessional capital was assumed to be readily available.

Dependence on government and philanthropic capital to enter impact-focused investment vehicles before private or even DFI capital participates is a gap that appears somewhat less pronounced among diaspora investors from developing economies living in developed markets. This creates a meaningful opportunity to unlock additional diaspora capital in the current environment.

More diaspora capital can create a snowball effect in crowding in local capital from resource-rich segments of these economies, including large private companies and wealthy families. In turn, this can encourage institutional capital allocators in developed markets to invest. Although the blended finance ecosystem is well served with a plethora of advisory firms, there is a need for greater participation from practitioners with tangible experience in closing and evaluating funds and blended finance transactions (as [this](https://www.convergence.finance/news/2vAm6a88OGvbmlxvMjDHJe/view) blog from Convergence appropriately highlights). This includes Impact investing-focused transaction advisors like Setuka Partners and legal firms like RPCK Rastegar Panchal and Climate Energy Counsel.

Finally, currency depreciation remains a constraint on the expansion of blended finance. Servicing only hard-currency earning businesses with blended finance vehicles addresses this to a certain extent both in terms of limiting the risk that hard currency investors are exposed to and expanding the pool of hard currency available locally in emerging markets to address the underlying imbalance that drives depreciation.

At the same time, this creates an opportunity for investors able to productively deploy local currency capital, including local private sector actors and diaspora investors. As blended finance practitioners, we at Setuka see this as a key frontier for growth, particularly in middle-and lower-middle-income economies.

__What new blended finance trends do you anticipate over the next 3–5 years?__

We believe guarantees, as a blended finance instrument, can be transformational, particularly in contexts where capital constraints are compounded by the liquidity concerns of capital allocators. We are already seeing more DFIs adopting guarantees. For example, Impact Fund Denmark is now independently allocating capital for guarantees following in the footsteps of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).

We also expect the “wake-up call” triggered by declining ODA and rising macroeconomic uncertainty to drive stronger investor demand for evidence of successful blended finance models and demonstrated leverage of private capital. 

__How do you see Setuka Partners’ blended finance activities evolving in the future?__

We plan to increase our focus on mobilizing local and diaspora capital, demonstrate successful examples of blended finance structures that achieve high leverage of private capital, and support private capital allocators beyond DFIs, including families, foundations, and sustainability-oriented institutions, in understanding and allocating capital to blended finance vehicles. 

We will also continue to advocate with regulatory authorities in India, the market with our largest presence, to advance reforms that enable blended finance capital flows.

Capital allocation globally remains heavily skewed between the “haves” and “have-nots,” whether across developed and emerging economies, gender, race, or geography. We see blended finance as an essential mechanism for correcting this imbalance and enabling a more democratic and merit-based allocation of capital globally. We see ourselves as one small but committed participant within the broader ecosystem working toward this goal.

Read our Member Spotlight with Setuka Partners to learn about their blueprint for an evergreen blended fund structure, market building initiatives, challenges they have faced, and more.

Setuka Partners Member Spotlight with Aman Khanna

[Innpact](https://innpact.com/) is an impact finance management platform providing fund management, advisory, impact management, and structuring services to impact finance actors globally. Established in 2007, they have built a strong track record in designing and implementing impact funds and blended finance vehicles. To date, Innpact has supported investments exceeding $10 billion. Their work includes helping impact vehicles come to market and supporting the broader ecosystem around them.

We spoke with Etienne de Belloy, Associate Director, Fund Management at Innpact about their blueprint for an evergreen blended fund structure, market building initiatives, challenges they have faced, and more.

__Tell us about the Global Gender-Smart Fund (GGSF). How does the fund use blended finance?__

The GGSF is an evergreen blended finance debt fund and the successor strategy to the Microfinance Enhancement Facility (MEF), with the new structure effective from 1 January 2024. It provides debt financing to financial institutions in developing markets to expand access to finance for underserved women and women-owned or women-led businesses. It is paired with a technical assistance facility to help partner institutions strengthen their gender practices. Innpact acts as alternative investment fund manager and global portfolio manager, while Incofin, responsAbility, and Triple Jump manage portfolio sourcing, relationships, and investment decisions.

The fund has a blended finance structure with junior equity providing protection against credit and foreign exchange losses, with an additional strong senior equity base from development finance institutions (DFIs). The fund then offers subordinated and senior notes, with subordinated notes being subscribed by both private and public investors, while senior notes are reserved for private investors, such as M&G Investments, in order to maximize the leverage provided by the junior and senior equity holders. The fund’s shareholders include the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, KfW Development Bank, the International Finance Corporation, the Development Bank of Austria, and the government of Sweden. The fund maintains strong risk ratios whereby junior equity needs to account for at least 17% of total assets, junior and senior equity to at least 40% of total assets, and junior and senior equity and subordinated notes to at least 60% of total assets.

__Innpact has developed a blueprint for an evergreen blended fund structure that has been replicated over and over again. What are your views on the replication and mobilization of private capital at scale?__

We believe replication is one of the most practical ways to mobilize private capital at scale. Our experience structuring evergreen blended vehicles, such as the European Fund for Southeast Europe, the Global Climate Partnership Fund, the Regional MSME Investment Fund for Sub-Saharan Africa, &Green, and the MEF, as well as its conversion to the GGSF, demonstrates that a strong core model can be adapted across sectors and markets without the need to start from scratch each time.

__How do your market building initiatives, such as Octobre, Impact Channel, MIRA, International Climate Finance Accelerator (ICFA), and International Social Finance Accelerator (ISFA), support your blended finance work?__

These initiatives support blended finance across the fund life cycle. ICFA and ISFA are accelerator programs that help emerging managers become investment-ready; Impact Channel connects impact fund managers with investors; MIRA supports impact, environmental, social, and governance, and sustainable finance disclosure regulation reporting; and Octobre works on the liquidity side. Together, they address several points of friction that can hold private capital back from participating in blended finance.

__What has Innpact been able to activate through its blended finance approach?__

Blended finance has helped bring together stakeholders who would not usually invest through the same structure, while creating room for clearer risk-sharing, technical assistance and, in many cases, local currency financing. In GGSF, for example, the structure combines support from DFIs and donors with private sector participation, including $250 million investments in senior and subordinated notes from M&G Investments and other private investors. Octobre addresses another barrier to private capital by offering liquidity options for otherwise illiquid impact fund positions.

__How do you measure the impact and success of your blended finance transactions?__

We typically look at success on two levels: whether a transaction mobilizes the right kind of capital, and whether that capital contributes to meaningful outcomes for end-beneficiaries and investees. In practice, this means starting with a clear impact thesis, tracking agreed indicators, collecting and aggregating data regularly, and reviewing data quality through due diligence, monitoring, and ongoing engagement.

__What are some interesting or unexpected challenges you’ve faced in the blended finance space?__

One of the main challenges is alignment. Blended finance often brings together stakeholders with different priorities, time horizons, and reporting expectations, so the real work is not only in the capital structure but also in building governance and processes that remain practical and credible for everyone involved. Ensuring alignment between the various investors in a blended finance fund often requires lengthy negotiations, despite our continuous efforts to standardize legal documentation.

__How do you see Innpact’s blended finance activities evolving in the future?__

We see blended finance becoming more repeatable, more data-led, and more closely linked to the wider market infrastructure around impact funds. As an impact finance management platform, Innpact’s direction is to combine fund structuring and management with stronger reporting, distribution, liquidity, and manager support across themes such as gender, climate, nature, and financial inclusion.

Read our Member Spotlight with Innpact to learn about their blueprint for an evergreen blended fund structure, market building initiatives, challenges they have faced, and more.

Innpact Member Spotlight with Etienne de Belloy

Rabobank is a large Dutch bank with a presence in 35+ countries, including 25+ emerging countries via Rabo Partnerships and Rabobank Foundation. In the Netherlands, Rabobank serves both retail and corporate clients, while globally they focus on the food and agricultural sector.

Within Rabobank, Rabo Partnerships is a dedicated entity that partners with financial institutions around the world to drive impact in food and financial systems, especially in emerging markets. In this way, it aims to strengthen these institutions’ ability to serve smallholder farmers and agricultural small- and medium-sized enterprises (agri‑SMEs).

We spoke to Pieter Bos, Sr. Advisor Blended Finance at Rabo Partnerships about how they engage in blended finance, the AGRI3 Fund, their focus areas, and more.

__Tell us about how you engage with partners to develop scalable food and agriculture finance solutions in emerging markets.__

We do this in a couple of ways. One is by taking minority equity stakes in these financial institutions and another is by delivering technical assistance. For example, part of this work involves setting up digital solutions, like developing digital credit‑scoring tools, using sensor and satellite data for farm and climate risk mapping, and embedding data‑driven approaches into the bank’s operations. The goal is really to help scale sustainable finance, reduce risk, and increase access to financial services where they are needed most.

We also have a dedicated blended finance team within Rabo Partnerships that focuses on bringing together public and private funding to mobilize capital into emerging markets. Rather than focusing on fund management, the team concentrates on origination and structuring: translating sustainability and transition challenges into concrete lending propositions that work for farmers, clients, and commercial banks alike. 

The blended finance team structures loans for Rabobank’s large base of corporate and rural clients in emerging markets, both on an individual basis and through portfolio lending. In addition, the team supports local financial institutions in engaging with impact capital providers including impact funds and development banks, and developing lending propositions that expand access to finance for the agricultural sector.

__Rabobank co-created the AGRI3 Fund, one of the most recognized blended finance vehicles. What motivated the bank to help launch this fund, and how has it evolved to meet market needs?__

AGRI3 was launched in 2020 by Rabobank and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), together with IDH and with support from FMO - Entrepreneurial Development Bank, and the Dutch government. It was created in response to the urgent need to support the transition to sustainable agricultural practices and to combat deforestation. Many farmers and agribusinesses are willing to invest in sustainable land use, but the financial system is often unable to support the associated risks and longer timelines.

Transitioning to deforestation-free and climate-resilient production typically requires longer loan tenors, grace periods and financing for activities that might not generate immediate cash flows. These features sit uncomfortably within traditional bank risk frameworks.

AGRI3 was designed as a guarantee-based blended finance fund. By providing partial credit guarantees and technical assistance, the fund enables commercial banks to -amongst others - extend loan tenors, increase ticket sizes and support transition investments that would otherwise remain unfunded.

A strong example of a loan proposition built with Agri3 Fund is [Renova Pasto](https://www.rabobank.com/about-us/rabo-partnerships/news/011331477/renova-pasto) in Brazil: a standardized loan product that combines long term financing, partial guarantees and technical assistance to support cattle farmers restore degraded pastureland and accelerate their compliance with the Brazilian Forest Code. Embedding this structure into regular credit processes has significantly improved efficiency and replicability.

Since its launch, AGRI3 has evolved from supporting individual transactions to more scalable, standardized approaches, including partnerships with other financial institutions.

__Many of Rabo Partnerships’ blended finance transactions make use of guarantees. Could you explain how guarantees help unlock private capital, and why Rabo Partnerships has chosen to prioritize this instrument over other blended finance tools?__

In sustainable agriculture and land-use transitions, risk is often structural rather than cyclical. Farmers face climate risks, transition risks and temporary income dips as they adopt new practices. At the same time, lenders face uncertainty around unfamiliar business models and the longer investment horizons these transitions require.

Guarantees directly address these challenges by absorbing part of the downside risk. For banks, that means they can lend with longer tenors, to clients, activities and/or assets that normally fall outside the standard risk appetite, while maintaining commercial pricing and credit discipline.

Rabobank sees clear value in these guarantees because they fit naturally into bank lending frameworks. They can be deployed efficiently, without requiring lenders to fundamentally change how they operate.

At the same time, guarantees remain scarce relative to demand. Expanding their availability for globally active lenders like Rabobank is, in our opinion, one of the most impactful roles development financial institutions (DFIs) and development banks could play in unlocking private capital for sustainable agriculture.

__What are the key impact areas Rabobank has focused on through its blended finance initiatives?__

Our blended finance team’s initial efforts have been mainly focused on deploying the AGRI3 Fund alongside Rabobank’s own balance sheet, which resulted in a sizeable and growing portfolio. 

At the same time, when it comes to working with local financial institutions and our “partner banks”, we are still at an earlier stage, but we see a clear opportunity to scale. Local banks and non-bank financial institutions are essential for farmer finance. They are close to farmers and understand local realities, but many remain cautious about financing food and agriculture businesses because of perceived risks.

Moving the needle requires stronger collaboration with value‑chain players to improve risk profiles, combined with blended finance tools that allow banks to reach underserved segments more confidently.

Overall, Rabo Partnerships’ blended finance work aligns with three closely connected Rabobank impact priorities:
- Nature: forest protection, land restoration, and deforestation-free supply chains
- Climate: mitigation and adaptation through more resilient farming systems
- People: improved rural livelihoods, equality, income stability, and access to financial services for rural communities.
 
Food security is also becoming an increasingly important focus; our work supports initiatives that stabilize and grow sustainable food production at scale. This includes solutions that help farmers access modern equipment and high‑quality inputs essential for productivity and climate resilience. Blended finance solutions play a critical role by sharing transition risks and supporting the evolution of our credit and risk‑assessment frameworks. This allows commercial capital to finance investments that would otherwise fall outside standard risk appetite. Experience shows that these objectives cannot be addressed in isolation. For instance, even environmental initiatives only scale when they are economically viable for farmers. 
 

__As a commercial bank, what have been the key challenges and opportunities you’ve experienced when working with DFIs or other public sector stakeholders to structure blended finance transactions?__

One recurring challenge we face is bringing together two quite different mindsets – those of commercial bankers and impact capital providers. It can take time to find the right partner with the appropriate de-risking tools, aligned impact ambitions, and the ability to engage at the right moment. This is partly because impact capital is fragmented. 

At the same time, there is a strong opportunity to combine complementary strengths. Rabo Partnerships brings origination capacity, sector expertise, and execution capability, while catalytic capital providers bring risk-bearing, possibly concessional capital and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) expertise. When these strengths come together effectively, we can co-develop new lending propositions that work for large corporates and value chain players, while ensuring they are scalable and replicable beyond individual transactions. 

__Drawing on your experience as a commercial lender and globally active food and agriculture bank, where do you see the greatest opportunities for blended finance to help unlock more bankable transactions in the sustainable agriculture sector?__

The biggest opportunity lies in moving beyond pilots and ensuring capital reaches farmers at scale.

Some of the most promising areas include portfolio-level guarantees for partner banks serving smallholders, value chain finance linked to corporates, like input providers, sustainable equipment manufacturers and off takers, and local currency risk-sharing structures. We also see strong potential in embedding climate and nature transition products directly into core bank offerings, such as with the Renova Pasto model, rather than treating it as a stand-alone initiative.

Rabo Partnerships can originate strong, real economy pipelines across regions and commodities. What is often missing is sufficient catalytic capital to share transition risks and enable these solutions to scale. This creates a clear opportunity for development banks, DFIs, and impact funds to partner with Rabobank, Rabo Partnerships, and our partner banks in building the next generation of sustainable agriculture finance.

Read our Member Spotlight with Rabobank to learn about how they engage in blended finance, their AGRI3 Fund, their focus areas, and more.

Rabobank Member Spotlight with Pieter Bos

The Financiera de Desarrollo Nacional (FDN) is Colombia’s infrastructure development bank, offering innovative products and services to attract resources that facilitate the private sector’s participation in development projects in Colombia. They engage in the pre-investment phase to ensure a better investment climate and a quality pipeline of projects that are fiscally and financially viable, and provide funding for projects in the infrastructure sectors.

We spoke with Enrique Cadena, Vice President of Structured Finance at FDN about their priorities, the effects of diminishing foreign aid budgets, how they engage in blended finance, the opportunities they see for blended finance in Latin America, and more.

__Tell us about FDN. What are key priorities for the organization and what are you focusing on right now?__

FDN is a mixed-capital institution, majority-owned by the government. We combine public purpose with private sector discipline, operating with technical independence, strong governance, and a long-term development vision. Our mission is to close financing gaps, structure strategic projects, and mobilize capital to build a more sustainable and inclusive country.

We work across two complementary fronts. First, through project structuring, we turn complex ideas into bankable projects by designing robust technical, legal, and financial frameworks that unlock investment. And second, through project financing, we provide tailored solutions that respond to each project’s unique risks and development impact, ensuring viability and scale.

Over the past decade, FDN has played a catalytic role in some of Colombia’s most transformative infrastructure initiatives. From supporting the landmark 4G highway program—Latin America’s largest road infrastructure effort—to leading the structuring and co-financing of Bogotá Metro Line 1, we have helped reshape how infrastructure is planned, financed, and delivered in the country.

In recent years, based on our experience in project finance and project structuring, we are trying to replicate this experience in sustainability projects, especially in small and utility scale renewable energy, water, and telecommunications. Today, our key priorities include mobilizing concessional capital from public and philanthropic partners, alongside FDN’s own resources to unlock investment in emerging sectors, particularly renewable energy and the energy transition (small and utility scale), while also crowding in private and institutional investors to scale sustainable infrastructure.

With deep technical expertise and market credibility, FDN has become a regional reference in sustainable infrastructure finance. We see blended finance not just as a tool, but as a catalyst that allows us to combine public purpose, private capital, and concessional resources to turn complex challenges into opportunities for development.

__How do you engage in blended finance? Can you describe one or two blended finance transactions that FDN has been involved in?__

FDN is committed to advancing innovative financial structures that optimize financing schemes and catalyze private capital mobilization. A recent flagship initiative is the structuring and financing of an innovative project to deploy individual solar photovoltaic systems for vulnerable households in La Guajira—one of the regions with the highest levels of social inequality in the country. The project provides reliable electricity access to communities historically excluded from basic energy services, contributing to the long-term transformation of one of Colombia’s most underserved territories.

This transaction was [executed](https://www.financecolombia.com/aes-colombia-soluna-and-fdn-finance-solar-energy-project-for-la-alta-guajira-communities/) through a blended finance structure that combined concessional funding from the Climate Investment Funds (CIF), channelled through the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), with a risk-mitigation instrument provided by FDN. This approach unlocked private investment and established a scalable, replicable framework for financing projects with meaningful social and environmental impact.

Another illustrative example is a solar initiative developed in partnership with the Tayrona Indigenous community. A defining element of this project is the active participation of the community not only in its development but also as equity investors in the solar park,demonstrating a model of inclusive ownership and co-creation that strengthens social license and long-term sustainability.

Both transactions used  blended finance structures combining concessional CIF resources, channeled through the IDB, with FDN’s risk-mitigation instruments. These structures successfully mobilized private capital and reinforced the viability of deploying similar models across high-impact, community-centered infrastructure projects.

__How do you measure the impact of blended finance transactions?__

FDN measures the impact of blended finance transactions through multiple lenses, aligned both with our institutional strategic objectives and the requirements  of concessional resource providers. Our impact assessment framework typically incorporates financial, environmental, and social dimensions.

From a __financial and risk__ perspective, we evaluate the level of private capital mobilized, the replicability of the structure across other projects or sectors, improvements in the project’s credit quality, and enhancements in financing conditions that  help make projects bankable.
From an __environmental__ perspective, we assess indicators such as avoided CO₂ emissions, new installed renewable energy capacity (MW), and the deployment of low-carbon technologies—for instance, the number of electric buses incorporated into fleets.

From a __social__ perspective, we measure the number of beneficiaries reached, jobs generated, and the extent to which vulnerable or underserved populations benefit , among other relevant indicators.

__What role do you see blended finance playing in financing infrastructure projects in LAC?__

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is among the regions with the greatest need for sustainable infrastructure investment to enhance social well-being and support long-term economic growth. While the region has demonstrated strong capacity to generate well-structured, high-impact, and financially attractive projects in recent years, it continues to capture a relatively small share of global blended finance flows despite these favourable conditions.

In this context, blended finance has a critical role to play in helping the region unlock greater private sector participation in strategic sectors such as energy, mobility, education, and health. By addressing key barriers—including perceived risk, limited track record in emerging sectors, and affordability challenges—blended finance can help close financing gaps and enable more transactions to reach financial close.

Looking ahead, LAC has the potential to assume a stronger leadership role, not only by developing a robust pipeline of sustainable infrastructure projects but also by designing and executing blended finance structures that mobilize private capital at scale. This will ultimately allow the region to accelerate investment, expand access to essential services, and deliver broader social and environmental impact.

__As a development bank, has the trend of countries diminishing their foreign aid budgets affected FDN’s operations?__

Yes, reduced foreign aid envelopes have had a tangible effect. Concessional and grant-based resources remain essential for infrastructure development in Colombia, especially for upstream work such as project preparation, capacity building, and structuring support that makes projects bankable. One concrete example was the closure of USAID resources that had already been planned for certain topics and projects, aimed at leveraging and mobilizing public and private finance to support Colombia’s climate adaptation and mitigation targets. This created an immediate gap that required operational reprioritization and rapid mobilization.

However, we also viewed the shift as a strategic opportunity. It accelerated our efforts to diversify funding sources and deepen relationships beyond traditional donors. We moved quickly to engage alternative partners , like the Climate Investment Funds, the Green Climate Fund, as well as other multilateral and bilateral agencies, and explore complementary instruments, reducing reliance on any single channel. In short, while the international aid environment is clearly changing, we are adapting proactively—using this moment to broaden our coalition of allies and to build new bridges with a wider ecosystem of public, philanthropic, and private actors.

__What are some opportunities you see for blended finance in Latin America? What are some challenges?__

Latin America presents significant opportunities for blended finance because the region combines large infrastructure and climate investment needs with limited fiscal space. The strongest near-term opportunities are in sectors with clear development outcomes and scalable cash flows—such as renewable energy and grid upgrades, resilient transport, water and sanitation, nature-based solutions, and social infrastructure—where catalytic funding can de-risk projects and crowd in private capital.

At the same time, the market context is shifting quickly. As some traditional aid budgets tighten, the region is seeing “newcomers” in blended finance and development support. Gulf countries are increasingly visible in these schemes, and China has strengthened its presence in recent years. While some funding sources may be declining, others are emerging, creating a real opportunity to diversify financing sources and instruments, both concessional and non-concessional.

The key challenge is execution. This includes understanding evolving investor requirements, aligning incentives across partners, and ensuring that projects are truly bankable. In many cases, the decisive bottleneck is upstream—insufficient pre-investment preparation, weak risk allocation, limited data, and inconsistent impact frameworks. The priority is to build high quality, high impact pipelines from the earliest stages so projects become attractive, investable opportunities for a broader  range of financiers.

__How do you see FDN’s blended finance activities evolving in the future?__

FDN’s solid track record in resource mobilization, project structuring, and execution, positions the institution as a strategic partner for the designing blended finance solutions that enable high impact infrastructure projects. Recently, in a single year, FDN deployed concessional resources originally planned for disbursement over a five-year horizon—demonstrating the institution’s operational agility, execution capacity, and robust pipeline of viable projects.

Looking ahead, FDN aims to deepen and expand its role in the blended finance ecosystem, strengthening its leadership in Colombia while positioning itself as a regional benchmark for innovative, scalable, and high-impact blended finance transactions.

Our corporate strategy explicitly recognizes blended finance as a core pillar for achieving our development mandate. FDN will continue strengthening its capacity to design catalytic financial instruments, collaborate with concessional resource providers, and mobilize private capital toward sectors with high economic, social, and environmental impact. Through this approach, we expect to scale up blended finance operations, replicate successful structures across multiple sectors, and contribute to bridging the region’s infrastructure and climate investment gaps.


Read our member spotlight featuring FDN to learn about their priorities, the effects of diminishing foreign aid budgets, how they engage in blended finance, the opportunities they see for blended finance in Latin America, and more.

Financiera de Desarrollo Nacional (FDN) Member Spotlight

Financiera de Desarrollo Nacional (FDN) Member Spotlight with Enrique Cadena

Finance in Motion is a global impact asset manager that aims to deliver diversified, risk-mitigated returns with impact. Their financing solutions address climate change, biodiversity loss, and social inequality. Over 20 years they have invested across 44 high-growth economies and have local expertise from Latin America to Eastern Europe. 

We spoke with Sylvia Wisniwski, CEO at Finance in Motion, about how they engage in blended finance, their geographic and sectoral foci, impact measurement, how they apply a gender lens in their work, and more.

__How do you engage in blended finance?__

Blended finance is a core pillar of our approach. We manage and advise tiered alternative investment fund structures where catalytic funding from public or multilateral development bank/development finance institution investors helps de-risk commercial investments, providing an attractive risk-return to institutional investors. This allows us to mobilize significant private capital into emerging markets where financing gaps are largest.

__Do you have a specific geographic or sectoral focus when it comes to blended finance?__

Our blended finance activities focus solely on emerging markets in Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. From a thematic point of view, we focus on green and social funds. Our green funds invest in climate mitigation and adaptation, biodiversity, sustainable agriculture, and circular economy. Our social funds focus on financial inclusion, supporting micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and underserved groups. These are high-impact areas where blended finance can make a measurable difference alongside generating adequate risk-return for investors.

__Can you tell us about a specific blended finance deal Finance in Motion was involved in? What were the conditions and were certain instruments used and why?__

We manage or advise five private debt funds that are all blended finance vehicles with a total of more than EUR 4 billion in catalytic and private capital. These blended finance funds are evergreen. They are under constant fundraising — and have been very successful in raising private capital. 

Instead of de-risking single investments, we use credit enhancement instruments at the portfolio level. Through this approach, we use catalytic funding on a rolling basis as portfolio composition changes over time, maximizing the impact of the first- and second-loss capital. This enables the creation of flagship funds like the [European Fund for South-East Europe](https://efse.lu/) and the [Green for Growth Fund (GGF)](https://www.ggf.lu/) which both at present have over EUR 1 billion in assets under management. Around EUR 8 billion has been invested via these two funds alone over the past 15 years. 

Let us take a closer look at the GGF. It was initiated by KfW Development Bank and European Investment Bank (EIB) in 2009 with first-loss funding from the European Commission and the German government. International finance institutions like EIB, KfW, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank, and Development Bank of Austria invested senior share capital making it a true “Team Europe” initiative. The International Finance Corporation invested as well. The share capital enabled investments from institutional investors into the fund due to its de-risking effect. With this capital base, GGF creates impact in 19 countries spanning the Western Balkans to the Middle East. GGF offers renewable energy, energy efficiency, and energy security investment opportunities through indirect financing (loans via local partner banks) and direct corporate and project finance. 

In addition to the catalytic effects in the capital structure, we have also engaged recently in a guarantee arrangement benefiting the asset side of our funds. We signed an unfunded guarantee with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency for the GGF amounting to EUR 60 million to increase the rate of green lending in selected countries of the Western Balkans and the EU Eastern Neighborhood beyond what we could do with first-loss capital. The interesting piece is that we kept the guarantee component outside of the capital stack or fund structure, making operations much simpler and straightforward.

__How do you measure the impact and evaluate the success of blended finance transactions?__

All our investments must pass through the three lenses of impact, risk, and return. Each fund is guided by an impact framework aligned with global standards like the Operating Principles for Impact Management, the Sustainable Development Goals, International Capital Market Association Green Bond Principles as well as relevant regulations like Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation and the EU Taxonomy.  

We track metrics aligned to the respective impact objectives pursued per fund, including greenhouse gas emissions avoided, hectares of land under sustainable management, jobs supported, or SMEs financed. Success, of course, is measured not only by direct outcomes but also by systemic change. For example, whether new green market standards are adopted by our investees, or whether investees continue to issue green products beyond our support.

__Do you apply a gender lens in your blended finance work?__

Gender considerations are mainstreamed across our investment process, particularly for our social funds. For example, the [SANAD Fund for MSME](https://sanad.lu/) actively supports women entrepreneurs through financing and capacity building programs. To inform these investments, we assess gender impact during the due diligence process. We also track gender data, encourage financial institutions to expand services for female clients, and increasingly align our work with the [2X Challenge](https://www.2xchallenge.org/) criteria to ensure women benefit as business owners.

__What are some interesting or unexpected challenges or learnings that you’ve had in the blended finance space thus far?__

One key learning is that blended finance requires alignment between the expectations of different stakeholders, from catalytic investors focused on impact, additionality, and leverage, to institutional investors seeking risk-adjusted returns. This requires careful structuring of blended finance vehicles and transparent communication.

At the same time, the complexity of many blended finance structures may weigh heavily on operating costs. In view of current fee compression in the asset management industry globally, many blended finance structures can only be financially sustainable if they operate at large scale.

Another challenge is timing. While structuring blended finance instruments and mobilizing catalytic capital needs time, investor needs and capital markets may change quickly. To make both come together at an agreed point in time is an art!

__What advice would you give to other organizations looking to enter or scale their efforts in blended finance?__

There is a tremendous wealth of literature about different blended finance models. Don't start from scratch, but do proper market intelligence and study the lessons learned from different blended finance models. Recently, Convergence has conducted helpful research in this context through its Scale Private Investment Mobilization Project, listing [blended finance models with different purposes](https://www.convergence.finance/standardization).

At the same time, blended finance has substantially changed over the past years. Today, blended finance structures must crowd in private capital at scale right from the start. It is also expected that there is as little blending as possible, while generating much larger leverage compared to old blended finance models. We also observe increasingly a combination of different types of blending instruments, funded first-loss capital combined with unfunded guarantees or several layers of guarantees. Furthermore, there must be proof of additionality and of the “paradigm shift” that catalytic capital enables. This requires sound impact measurement and management systems.

__How do you see Finance in Motion’s blended finance activities evolving in the future?__

As we wrap up 2025, looking ahead, we expect to deepen our focus on climate and nature finance.  Given our geographic focus on emerging markets, catalytic capital will continue to play an important role. Our goal is to mobilize even larger pools of institutional capital by offering products that combine measurable impact with robust risk-return profiles. In short, we see blended finance evolving from niche innovation to mainstream practice and [Finance in Motion](https://www.finance-in-motion.com/) intends to remain at the forefront of that shift.

Finance in Motion Member Spotlight with Sylvia Wisniwski

RDF Ghana promotes access to finance for Micro, Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (MSMEs) engaged in the business of agriculture and/or renewable energy, especially women-owned businesses.

We spoke to Yaw Oppong, CEO at RDF Ghana about their origins, impact, gaps and opportunities they see in the field, how they see their activities evolving in the future, and much more.

__Please tell us about the origins of RDF Ghana and what market failures you were set up to solve.__

RDF Ghana is an impact-driven institution, founded in 2016 by the Government of Ghana and Impact Fund Denmark. The creation of RDF Ghana was driven by the need to address the limited access to affordable credit for MSMEs in the agriculture and renewable energy sectors. RDF Ghana was also established to strengthen the capacity of Partner Financial Institutions (PFIs) and value chain actors, addressing constraints that have limited effective credit utilization. With seed funding from the Danish Government, we began as a wholesale fund channeling capital through PFIs, particularly rural banks, to underserved markets. We have since evolved into a dynamic institution also providing direct financing and capacity-building to smallholder farmers organized as outgrower businesses and Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs). Our work systematically de-risks investments, builds climate resilience, and enhances the economic empowerment of women and youth.

__Describe your guarantee, line of credit, and technical assistance business. How do these offerings work together? What kinds of businesses / financial institutions do you typically partner with, and how does this help unlock additional private capital?__

__Credit Delivery - Direct and Indirect Financing__
RDF Ghana ensures capital reaches smallholder farmers through direct and indirect channels. We provide wholesale lines of credit to PFIs, mainly rural banks. We also offer direct input financing, which targets smallholder farmers organized into Outgrower Schemes and VSLAs, ensuring timely access to inputs and market linkages.

__De-risking With Credit Guarantees__
Our guarantee facility uses a 50% risk-sharing model (portfolio guarantee) to incentivize PFIs to increase lending to agriculture. This approach effectively unlocks capital for underserved borrowers by mitigating agricultural lending risks.

__Capacity-Building Through Technical Assistance__
Our Technical Assistance (TA) programs are designed to empower women and youth, strengthen the capacities of both farmers and financial institutions, and enhance environmental sustainability. Our flagship programs include:
- RDF Executive Management Essentials for RCBs (REMERB): Delivered with the National Banking College, this program closes critical knowledge gaps in corporate governance, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) standards, risk management, and capital management, solely for rural banks.
- Agro Woman 360 (AW360): Holistically empowers rural women smallholder farmers through financial literacy, alternative livelihoods, and climate resilience training.
- Integrated Soil Fertility Management (ISFM): Promotes climate-smart agriculture by training farmers in input-use efficiency and sustainable soil health practices. 
 

__What would you say has been the impact of your work within the Ghanaian financial ecosystem? Feel free to share relevant examples that demonstrate the catalytic impact of our work.__

Our commitment to serving smallholder farmers has played a transformative role in strengthening rural finance and deepening Ghana’s financial ecosystem. Leveraging partnerships with PFIs and agricultural facilitators, we have deployed approximately $11 million in loans and technical assistance. These reached 30,000+ beneficiaries, including 60% women and 79% smallholder farmers. Our intervention has incentivized agriculture lending, built stronger institutions, created jobs, and scalable market opportunities: 
 
__Unlocking Capital__: Our 50% portfolio guarantee to PFIs like ABSA Bank Ghana, Kwahu Praso Rural Bank, and Agave Rural Bank have directly mitigated their risk, enabling them to collectively increase their agricultural loan portfolio. For every $1 that RDF has deployed in guarantees, we have mobilized $2.50 in private capital from our PFIs. For example, Kwahu Praso Rural Bank has increased its agriculture loan portfolio by over 50% since partnering in 2024. 
 
__Strong Institutions__: PFIs that completed our ‘REMERB’ governance training have strengthened their risk management frameworks and are better equipped to serve rural clients. 
 
__Job Creation__: While we directly reached 30,000+ beneficiaries, our interventions have supported an estimated 113,526 jobs, significantly demonstrating a catalytic effect on rural employment and livelihoods. 
 
__Scalable Models__: A strategic partnership with USAID served as a critical proof-of-concept for our transformative integrated outgrower model. What began as a pilot project with VSLAs has evolved into a scalable Outgrower Loan Scheme providing market linkages, weather insurance, and tailored financing to the smallholder farmers.

Additional positive tangible outcomes from our 2020–2024 strategic period include the following:
- 81.2% of MSMEs including agribusinesses reported higher incomes, driven by yield improvements ranging from 26% to 50%.
- Among farmers, nearly 60% achieved yield gains exceeding 50%, contributing to a 57% increase in average weekly produce sales. 
 

__Does RDF Ghana apply a gender lens when it comes to its blended finance activities? If yes, could you shed some light on how this is accomplished (metrics tracked and indicators)?__

Gender inclusion is core to our operations and is systematically integrated into the design and delivery of all our interventions. This commitment is reflected in our reach, as women account for over 60% of all RDF interventions, including 76% of TA recipients and 53% of loan beneficiaries. Building on this foundation, our flagship initiative Agro Woman 360 empowers women smallholder farmers through group structures and VSLAs. By strengthening financial literacy, business acumen, and climate resilience, the program has enabled over 50% of participating women to gain greater influence and respect within their families and communities. These efforts reinforce our mission to promote inclusive growth, reduce poverty, and build resilient livelihoods across our target communities.

__Tailored Financial Solutions__: Recognizing that one size does not fit all, we design context-specific solutions. In Northern Ghana, for example, where women dominate the shea, soya, and groundnut value chains, we introduced tailored credit facilities for Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs). This directly expands finance access and strategically strengthens women's pivotal role in these critical agricultural value chains.

__Rigorous Measurement and Global Alignment__: Our approach is guided by clear metrics and global standards, including alignment with SDG 5 (Gender Equality) and the 2X Challenge Criteria. We track key performance indicators such as share of women beneficiaries across products and services, land ownership and control, and economic empowerment and decision-making power. These interventions not only promote inclusion but also serve as a powerful catalyst that enhances productivity, builds community-wide resilience, and drives systemic change within rural economies.

__As an impact-driven institution in the agriculture and renewable energy space in Ghana, what gaps/opportunities do you see in the Ghanaian financial ecosystem that blended finance can help unlock?__

Despite the progress made, agriculture and renewable energy remain underfinanced in Ghana, with high perceived risks. RDF has demonstrated that by strategically integrating capital and TA, we can prove the commercial viability of these underserved markets. We see four priority areas where blended finance can unlock transformative opportunities: 
 
__Expand Access to Finance__: A critical void exists for smallholder farmers lacking access to financing due to their small size, lack of track record, or collateral. An opportunity exists for blended finance to provide first-loss capital to de-risk the investments for impact investors. This would unlock capital to scale and create formal market linkages for many smallholder farmers. Expanding credit guarantee schemes will also encourage greater lending to these underserved sectors. 
 
__Renewable Energy Transitions__: A significant gap remains in financing renewable energy for productive use in agriculture (e.g., solar solutions for irrigation, milling, drying, storage). Grants or concessional capital can cover the high upfront costs and provide TA to de-risk the technology for both provider and end-user, which could ultimately unlock commercial debt and equity. 
 
__Climate Adaptation Tools__: There is an increasing demand for agricultural insurance, solar-powered irrigation, and climate-smart inputs. Blended finance can accelerate adaptation by providing lower-cost, longer-term capital and grants. 
 
__Data and Digital Infrastructure__: Targeted blended finance solutions can address structural weaknesses in agricultural financing, particularly the lack of reliable data, which leads to high-risk premiums. Using catalytic grants to support the development of integrated agricultural platforms could attract commercial lenders into the space.

__What does the future look like for RDF Ghana? How will your strategy and interventions evolve going forward? What role do you see yourself playing to help increase financing flows to the agriculture sector, which comparatively remains underserved?__ 
 
Transformative changes in rural economies require strong strategic collaboration. Going forward, we are looking to foster partnerships with like-minded investors, development partners, and private sector actors. Through these partnerships, we would amplify our collective impact, crowd in significant private investment, and drive the systemic changes needed to empower rural communities. Our collaborative efforts will concentrate on three strategic pillars:
 
__Build Resilient and Integrated Value Chains__: By integrating financing with targeted TA, we will strategically partner with agriculture actors, input suppliers, and off-takers to create viable models that de-risk the entire chain, ensuring access to quality inputs, training, and guaranteed markets. 
 
__Unlock Institutional Capital__: We will position ourselves as a trusted intermediary that can bundle smaller, risky agricultural loans into larger, more structured investment opportunities for institutional investors who seek impact and return, but lack the capacity to deal with fragmented, small-ticket transactions. 
 
__Champion Climate-Smart and Inclusive Finance__: We are committed to embedding climate resilience and gender inclusion at the heart of rural finance. We are looking to achieve this by:
- Scaling Proven Practices – Expanding our Integrated Soil and Fertility Management (ISFM) program to promote sustainable land use.
- Minimizing Climate Shocks – Broadening access to affordable agricultural insurance for smallholders.
- Advancing Gender Inclusion – Intensifying our targeted interventions to increase the economic participation of women and youth.
- Solar-Powered Agriculture – Focusing on solar-powered solutions for irrigation and other productive agriculture uses.

RDF Ghana Member Spotlight with Yaw Oppong

Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF) is a mission-driven investment fund that provides debt and equity financing, alongside strategic business advice, to independent media and information ventures. For 30 years MDIF has invested in independent media around the world providing diverse news and facilitating the exchange of information and views needed to build free, thriving societies.

We spoke with Patrice Schneider, Chief Strategy Officer about how MDIF engages in blended finance, how they measure impact, gaps and opportunities in the blended finance market, and more.

__What does MDIF do and how does it engage in blended finance?__ 

In our blended finance approach, philanthropic capital plays a catalytic role. Grant funding, guarantees, and concessional capital allow us to crowd in private investors. Crucially, we use blended finance not just to manage risk, but to enable investments where market-rate returns are less feasible, but the societal value is high. We advocate for a third way of media financing that fills the space between grants and commercial capital and recognizes the public value of independent information often overlooked by the market.

As leading economists, including Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Daron Acemoğlu, have [written](https://informationdemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/The-Economic-Imperative-of-Investing-in-Public-Interest-Media.pdf): “Access to reliable information is the fundamental resource that fuels our 21st century economy (…), no less than previous eras relied on the power of steam or coal for industrial development.” However, despite its essential role, the independent media sector remains systemically overlooked in impact investing. While conventional media investment often prioritizes profit at the expense of public interest, eroding standards and weakening the sector’s mission, our work helps ensure this critical infrastructure receives the long-term investment it needs to serve the public good.

__MDIF is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year – and blended finance has been part of your strategy since the very beginning. What achievements are you proud of?__ 

With 30 years of experience, MDIF has been investing in independent media and information ventures long before terms like “impact investing” or “blended finance” entered the mainstream. From the outset, we’ve combined grants, concessional funding, and commercial capital to support public-interest media with financing aligned to their mission.

Our achievements are best reflected in the long-term impact of our clients. Since 1996, we’ve [invested](https://www.mdif.org/impact/track-record/) $270.9 million in debt and equity across 157 media and information companies in 50 countries. Many have grown from startups into trusted national institutions, withstanding political pressure, navigating economic shocks, and seizing opportunities to expand their reach and impact.

They inform millions, hold power to account, support democratic participation, and help drive progress in their communities. That enduring contribution to more informed, resilient societies is the legacy we are most proud of.

__Can you describe one or two blended finance transactions that MDIF has been involved in?__ 

One example is Plūrālis, a media investment vehicle that provides mission-driven, blended capital and strategic media growth expertise to independent media in Central and Eastern Europe to support media plurality. Managed and co-funded by MDIF, it brings together a coalition of prestigious European media companies, foundations, and impact investors. Its blended structure combines concessional and grant capital from philanthropy, industry expertise from leading media organizations, institutional capital interested in impact, and contributions from private wealth seeking both financial and societal returns. To expand access to capital, MDIF partnered with leading German ethical bank GLS to issue Europe’s first impact bond for media plurality.

Another example is MDIF Media Finance (MMF), a blended-value loan fund providing affordable loans to independent media in OECD-DAC countries, launched with the backing of Sida, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. Through a 55% first-loss guarantee, Sida enabled MDIF to raise capital from private investors, reducing their risk exposure while allowing MDIF to expand financing for independent media in challenging environments.

These transactions illustrate how blended finance can align public and private capital behind a common goal: ensuring that independent media have the resources to serve the public interest, even when the market alone falls short.

__How do you measure the impact of your blended finance activities?__ 

Blended finance runs through MDIF as an organization, as well as specific funds, so the impact of MDIF as a whole is a reflection of the impact of our blended finance activities. Our investments strengthen builders of informed societies so that they can fulfil their vital role—sharing information that drives change, from new laws to better lives. [Research](https://www.mdif.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/MDIF-The-role-of-media-Driving-change-towards-the-SDGs.pdf) shows that free, viable, and diverse media are essential for democracy and human progress. Their work supports peace, justice, and strong institutions under Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16.10, while advancing progress across all SDGs.

We [track](https://www.mdif.org/impact/our-impact/) impact on two levels. First, we assess how our financing and strategic support help strengthen our clients—looking at metrics such as revenue growth, reach, or operational resilience. Second, we examine how our clients contribute to society—whether they are informing public debate, exposing corruption, enabling civic participation, or holding power to account. These findings are published [annually in our impact reports](https://www.mdif.org/impact/annual-reports/), combining data with case studies that show what independent media can achieve when they have the capital to support their mission.

__What gaps or opportunities do you see in the blended finance market?__ 

While there is growing recognition of blended finance, impact-first funding continues to fall short, especially for sectors like independent media that are essential to democratic resilience but difficult to serve through purely commercial models.

A key gap is the lack of flexible catalytic capital. Much of the current market is designed to reduce risk for private investors, rather than to enable impact-first investments. This limits the ability to reach sectors that deliver high public value but can’t promise market-rate returns. In MDIF’s case, blended finance is not simply about risk adjustment. It’s about making transactions possible where they otherwise would not be, due to structural market failure.

We believe what’s needed is not just more blended finance, but the growth of an *[ethical financial sector](https://medium.com/@patrice.schneider/funding-democracy-the-ethical-financial-sector-and-independent-media-06554c691910)*: a space for investors, donors, and financial institutions willing to prioritize public-interest outcomes over purely financial performance.

__How do you see MDIF’s blended finance activities evolving in the future?__ 

As information becomes increasingly central to how societies and economies function, the need for long-term, mission-aligned financing for independent media will only grow. Yet market failures persist. MDIF will continue to evolve our blended finance activities to meet this growing structural challenge.

We see a future where blended finance is not just a mechanism to de-risk investment, but a core strategy for enabling access to reliable information, especially in contexts where commercial capital alone cannot deliver. For MDIF, this means continuing to mobilize flexible, catalytic capital and structuring it in ways that reflect the unique realities of media businesses: long time horizons, non-linear growth, and a public service mission that often resists easy monetization. We will also continue to expand the role of the ethical financial sector, building partnerships with donors, development finance institutions, and values-driven investors who understand that supporting independent media is not just a democratic imperative, but an economic necessity.

Learn how Media Development Investment Fund engages in blended finance, how they measure impact, gaps and opportunities in the blended finance market, and more.

MDIF Member Spotlight with Patrice Schneider

Media Development Investment Fund Member Spotlight with Patrice Schneider

Standard Chartered is a global bank connecting corporate, institutional, and affluent clients to a network that offers unique access to sustainable growth opportunities across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

According to Convergence Market Data, Standard Chartered is one of the most active private investors in blended finance, working with multilateral development banks (MDBs), development finance institutions (DFIs), governments, and philanthropy on tailor-made blended finance solutions.

We spoke to John Murton, Senior Sustainability Advisor at Standard Chartered about their Blended Finance Programmes Innovation Hub, gaps and opportunities they see in the field as a commercial investor, how they see their blended finance activities evolving in the future, and much more.

__How does Standard Chartered engage in blended finance?__

Historically we have approached blended finance on a project-by-project basis, which somewhat limits our opportunity to scale. This is why in 2024 we created the Blended Finance Programmes Team with the goal of establishing programmes that can strategically deploy blended finance solutions at both speed and scale.

This team sits within Standard Chartered’s Innovation Hub, which was launched in 2023 to focus on emerging sustainability themes that are nascent but ripe for growth. Today, we have five thematic areas of innovation: Programmatic Blended Finance, Carbon Market Development, Nature Finance, Circular Economy, and Adaptation and Resilience. The Hub is helping to test and scale solutions to help advance the ecosystem in these emerging thematic areas.

Our Blended Finance Programmes team within the Hub focuses on the delivery of both ‘Country Platforms’ and ‘sectoral partnerships’. On Country Platforms, Standard Chartered supports the Just Energy Transition Partnership processes across our markets, and we’re a signatory (as part of GFANZ) to the Indonesia and Vietnam JETP, pledging to at least match initial donor pledges sized at $10 billion and $7.75 billion respectively. In 2025 we [acted as lead arranger for the Saguling floating solar project in Indonesia](https://www.sc.com/en/press-release/press-release-2/); the first project to be financed under the JETP.

In addition to supporting these already established country platforms, we are working to support the creation and development of new country platforms that address the unique needs of our markets when it comes to financing the transition. We are the only private institution to sign up to the Bangladesh Climate and Development Platform focused on both mitigation and adaption. We are also mandated to advance Lesotho’s Just Energy Transition process – the first private-sector led country platform.

On partnerships, we are actively engaging with MDBs and DFIs with the aim of establishing strategic partnership frameworks that will catalyze capital and unlock financing for multiple projects. We expect to announce some exciting partnerships over the next year!

__Can you describe one or two blended finance transactions that Standard Chartered has been involved in? In what capacity did it participate?__

In September, colleagues in Standard Chartered’s Development and Agencies Finance team successfully structured [a first-of-a-kind EUR 433 million Sustainability-Linked Loan for the Ministry of Finance and Budget, Republic of Cote d’Ivoire](https://www.sc.com/uk/2025/09/02/standard-chartered-delivers-cote-divoires-first-sustainability-linked-loan-under-new-sustainability-linked-financing-framework/). The loan was supported by the World Bank Group, acting through the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). Standard Chartered acted as sole lender and mandated lead arranger.

This landmark facility was the first ever transaction to combine both first-loss and second loss guarantees from IBRD and MIGA, marking a significant milestone for the World Bank Group’s new Guarantee Platform. IBRD’s first loss policy-based guarantee and MIGA’s second-loss non-honouring of sovereign financial obligations were combined to achieve a total comprehensive World Bank cover level of 95%.

Arranged under Côte d’Ivoire’s Sustainability-Linked Financing Framework launched in June 2025, the sustainability-linked loan was structured to include a margin ratchet, linking financial conditions to clear sustainability performance targets in renewable energy (excluding hydropower), deforestation prevention, and reforestation. The framework will support efforts to meet the country’s goal to reduce carbon emissions by over 30% by 2030 and is expected to help boost resilience to climate impacts relating to agriculture. Furthermore, the incentive structure enabled the government to access long-term, competitive, and essential financing to advance their national climate resilience agenda. The transaction effectively showcases how collaborative innovation can help mobilize capital efficiently and support credible models for sovereign sustainable finance that can be replicated.

Looking to Asia, in 2024 Standard Chartered was the lead arranger in the refinancing of an IBRD loan to the State Bank of India (SBI) to support India’s national Grid-Connected Rooftop Solar (GPRV) programme. Originally launched in 2016, the programme, through SBI on-lending, funds photovoltaic installations to commercial and industrial consumers, that provide clean energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by displacing more expensive and carbon-intensive thermal generation.

The refinancing transaction included a 95% comprehensive guarantee from MIGA to protect against the risk of non-honouring of financial obligations by a state-owned enterprise for up to 10 years. By guaranteeing the refinancing, this project showcases an ‘originate to refinance’ model, an approach recommended by the Private Sector Investment Lab, launched by the World Bank Group in June 2023 to identify barriers and find potential solutions to unlock private investment in developing countries. Furthermore, by transferring portfolio risk from the World Bank balance sheet, following the initial de-risking of a nascent sector, to commercial lenders it frees up World Bank capacity to lend into new sectors and projects. The [financing](https://www.miga.org/press-release/miga-supports-innovative-solar-rooftop-systems-india) successfully helped SBI to reduce its borrowing costs and diversify its sources of borrowing.

__How do you measure the impact of your blended finance activities? What does that impact look like?__

We’ve been publishing our [Sustainable Finance Impact Report](https://www.sc.com/en/uploads/sites/66/content/docs/sustainable-finance-impact-report.pdf) since 2020 to highlight the tangible impact of this work, and key outcomes across our markets. This report quantifies the environmental and social outcomes of our sustainable finance activities, ranging from renewable energy capacity installed to social infrastructure supported.  Importantly, the report is subject to external assurance and aligned to ICMA’s Harmonised Framework for Impact Reporting.  In 2024 we were proud to report a Sustainable Finance asset portfolio of $23.3 billion across 439 projects in 51 markets. This was a 32% year-on-year increase from $17.6 billion in 2023.

Blended finance transactions are currently not covered in our sustainable finance impact report in their own right. Such transactions are inherently complex - and often bespoke - structuring solutions that can be difficult to capture systematically. However, there is significant overlap between our sustainable finance work and our blended finance work across the bank as both aim to advance high-impact projects that deliver meaningful sustainable development outcomes.  In many cases, projects supported through blended finance solutions will already be reflected within our sustainable finance impact reporting, including key metrics such as jobs created, emissions avoided, renewable energy capacity etc.

Looking ahead, our intention is to evolve our approach by potentially consolidating impact measurement for transactions across our innovation hub, featuring our blended finance programmes, debt-for-nature swaps, and outcome-based bonds for example. This would enable the Hub to set targets that can be more clearly measured, tracked, and reported. For the Blended Finance Programmes team this may include, in addition to those metrics above, the blended finance effectiveness of the transaction, such as dollars of private sector money mobilized per concessional dollar. We would expect to apply the same principles we use today: portfolio-level reporting and project-level reporting, attribution of impacts based on our financing share, and a commitment to transparency and credibility. That means being clear about whether impacts are realized or estimated, avoiding double-counting, and disclosing the methodologies used where estimates are applied.

__As a commercial investor in the blended finance space, what gaps/opportunities do you see in the blended finance market? What unique challenges do you face while engaging with public and/or philanthropic investors?__

We still see instances where private sector lending is being crowded out, and not efficiently mobilized, even in sectors and regions which are commercially viable. Blended finance must evolve so that each dollar of concessional funding mobilizes more private sector capital. The IIF’s ‘Lifting Prudential Barriers to Mobilizing Private Capital for Development Finance’ Policy Paper highlighted that every dollar every dollar committed by MDBs has only mobilized 50 cents of private capital in recent years. This must grow very significantly.  To achieve this, we need to make better use of effective de-risking tools such as first loss guarantees and price support mechanisms.  And we need to structure de-risking mechanisms so that lenders become comfortable with certain risks and concessional funding over time becomes less necessary.

At the same time, we are currently seeing an increase of blended finance solutions and models that have worked. Reports such as the Sustainable Markets Initiative and Investor Leadership Network’s ‘Blended Finance Best Practice’ and Convergence’s [Scale Private Investment Mobilization Project](https://www.convergence.finance/standardization) have been standout example of collating such efforts. There is a real opportunity to now take such solutions and replicate and scale into new themes and markets.

To maximize these efforts, we must engage new types of investors such as philanthropies, sovereign wealth funds and local capital markets, that can play critical roles across the life cycle of blended finance solutions. For example, philanthropies are able to contribute in the short term with much needed grants and technical assistance to get projects off the ground and create a viable and investable model. Sovereign wealth funds can invest in projects with long-term patient capital which provides stability and security for investors. Local Capital Markets can then offer exit strategies and help projects to refinance at better rates, freeing up capital to be recycled into new projects. The size of these untapped pools of capital is staggering and will be key to ensuring the future resilience of blended finance solutions in light of recent geo-political shifts and to widening the pools of supply.  According to Africa Finance Corporation’s recent ‘State of Africa’s Infrastructure Report 2025’ there are over $4 trillion in domestic resources on the African continent which are not currently being leveraged.

__How do you see Standard Chartered blended finance activities evolving in the future?__

Standard Chartered is committed to effectively deploying blended finance solutions to themes and geographies where it is most needed to help make projects bankable and crowd in private sector investment. We want to continue to be at or near the top of Convergence’s league tables, evidencing efforts to use blended finance to support our sustainable finance goals, and long-term value creation for our markets. As our CEO has said, *sustainable finance isn’t just business that’s good, it’s good business*.

One opportunity we are currently very excited about is our mandate with ‘His Majesty King Letsie III Just Energy Transition Limited’ an SPV looking to form a first-of-a-kind private sector led country platform in Lesotho. The initiative, endorsed by His Majesty and the government, is designed to mobilize different pools of capital to finance a portfolio of both generation and transmission projects to support the delivery of Lesotho’s NDC and Mission300 Compact. The opportunity represents a unique case study for a land-locked least developed country to leapfrog from an energy importer to an exporter of clean power, supporting domestic and regional energy stability and security.

Similarly, we see great potential for the Innovation hub to continue to incubate new and exciting blended finance solutions to support emerging themes within the sustainability ecosystem such as adaptation financing and [circular economy](https://www.sc.com/en/press-release/standard-chartered-appoints-andrew-morlet-as-senior-advisor-circular-economy/) projects. Watch this space!

Learn about Standard Chartered's Blended Finance Programmes Innovation Hub, gaps and opportunities they see in the field as a commercial investor, how they see their blended finance activities evolving in the future, and much more.

Standard Chartered Member Spotlight with John Murton

Bolivian Investment Management Ltd (BIM) is an impact investments manager with over 25 years of experience creating and managing 14 investment companies and specialized funds seeking a positive impact beyond financial return.

We spoke to Daniel Maldonado, Investor Relations Officer at BIM about how they engage in blended finance, how they measure impact, their priority sectors, and more.

__Can you tell us about BIM and how you engage in blended finance?__

BIM, established in 1997, is one of six companies within the Panamerican Group, a financial group established in 1994 in Bolivia. BIM was founded as an asset manager with a focus on investments that create impact beyond financial returns. In its early years, BIM managed multi-sectoral funds. However, in 2007, with the launch of Locfund—a regional local currency microfinance investment vehicle focused on Latin America and the Caribbean—BIM shifted its focus exclusively to the microfinance sector.

Although the term blended finance was not widely used in 2007, when the first version of the vehicle—Locfund L.P.—was launched, the fund’s structure already reflected many of its core principles. It was able to attract two private investors, drawn by the potential impact outcomes of Locfund. However, this interest was made possible only because those investors had previously worked alongside public capital providers.

The track record built through this initial experience allowed the management team to maintain relationships with prior investors. Still, in the successor vehicle, the only private investor represented just 4.8% of the total capital raised. Despite the positive financial and impact results of Locfund I, raising additional private funding for Locfund II proved to be a challenge.

By 2020, with more than 12 years of successful operations, the new and current version—Locfund Next—was launched. This iteration managed to raise a larger pool of capital and succeeded in bringing in private foundations whose participation was both material and catalytic to the fund’s launch. However, these foundations had impact mandates embedded in their bylaws, and Locfund Next continued to face difficulties in attracting "pure" private investors—those motivated primarily by risk-adjusted financial returns—in the financial inclusion space in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).  

Today, the effort to attract private capital remains ongoing. Experience has shown that when targeting private investors willing to take development-related risks in less conventional markets, a strong track record and critical mass are essential. Only then can vehicles like Locfund Next align with the risk-return expectations of private capital.

__Can you tell us more about Locfund Next? What are some of the outcomes/expected outcomes?__

Although the fund is in its fifth year of operations, it is expected to deliver the projected financial returns by its 10th anniversary.

Locfund Next is structured as an evergreen-like fund, allowing shareholders to enter and exit at the end of defined equity stages. The initial equity stage spans 10 years, with each subsequent stage lasting five years.

Preliminary results from the first cohort of equity investors have been positive, sparking renewed interest from potential investors. As of June 2025, Locfund Next has built a robust capital structure with the participation of 16 investors, including six purely private investors. All 16 investors, though, have at the core of its mission, the requirement of development outcomes. 

During this period, the fund has disbursed over $380 million across 279 transactions, reaching a total of 61 microfinance institutions (MFIs) throughout the region. Locfund Next has consolidated its position as a regional leader, becoming the Microfinance Investment Vehicle (MIV) with the widest MFI outreach at the same time, operating concurrently in 15 countries.

Furthermore, in alignment with its core development and impact mandate, Locfund Next was able to raise technical assistance resources from the same investors, in order for this fund to be deployed to the microfinance institutions to strengthen areas such as gender equality, asset and liability management, and corporate governance, among others. To date, Locfund Next has completed 147 Technical Assistance initiatives across the region through its Technical Support Facility – TSF, reducing the risk of the underlying portfolio of the fund.

This momentum is expected to attract greater participation from private investors during the second equity stage, anticipated around 2029–2030. 

__Can you tell us more about the challenges you’ve faced with attracting institutional investors to Locfund Next?__

The first challenge relates to scale. Both the size of the fund and the individual investment tickets must align with the mandates of institutional investors. Since the launch of Locfund I in 2007, and through the consistent growth of Locfund II and now Locfund Next, this challenge has been progressively addressed, resulting in a vehicle with sufficient critical mass to appeal to institutional capital.

The second challenge lies in the limited familiarity most institutional investors have with the microfinance sector. This often necessitates the inclusion of additional risk mitigation mechanisms to make the investment case viable. To address this, BIM has explored several alternatives, including the use of partial guarantees from development finance institutions (DFIs). These guarantees could, in turn, be supported by technical assistance funding from other DFIs—effectively creating a dual-layered blended finance structure to enhance investor confidence and facilitate further growth of Locfund Next’s operations. 

__How do you measure the impact of your blended finance investments?__

Given the nature of microfinance, Locfund Next’s portfolio inherently generates impact across multiple indicators. The fund focuses on attending to underserved populations through the microfinance institutions it supports, reaching over 40% of end clients located in rural areas across the region and targeting more than 50% of women among its final beneficiaries.

Locfund Next also aims to support the most vulnerable segments of the population. One key indicator of this is the average loan size to end clients, which currently stands at $1,400, reflecting the fund’s reach to low-income borrowers.

__What role do you see blended finance playing in the microfinance industry in LAC?__

The microfinance industry in LAC remains a relatively small segment within the broader financial systems of each country. The total outstanding microfinance portfolio in the region is estimated at approximately $52 billion, but there are around 132 million people without access to formal financial services. The industry has maintained a steady annual growth rate of around 10%, driven primarily by unmet demand. To sustain this level of growth, the sector requires approximately $5 billion in fresh capital each year.

Unfortunately, public investors alone are not able to meet this financing need, underscoring the critical role of blended finance as a catalytic solution.

The encouraging news is that, where managed effectively and with a clear focus on financial inclusion, the microfinance sector has consistently delivered positive and stable performance. In many cases, financial indicators within the industry are not only healthy but also outperform those of the traditional financial system. These results provide a compelling case for further blended finance transactions, where private investors can engage under conditions that align with their risk-return expectations, while also contributing to inclusive development in the region. 

__Do you apply a gender lens in your blended finance activities?__

Yes. While microfinance is inherently aligned with gender lens investing, BIM has made a deliberate effort to further emphasize this focus. As a result, Locfund Next was granted the status of a 2X Challenge Flagship Fund, and BIM recently became a signatory of the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles.

In practice, all microfinance institutions (MFIs) that Locfund Next has worked with are able to identify the proportion of women among their end-clients and the composition of their portfolio by gender. This gender-disaggregated data is monitored by Locfund Next on a monthly basis to ensure a clear understanding of the fund’s outreach to this key segment. On average, more than 60% of the end-clients served through the portfolio are women.

__How do you see BIM’s blended finance activities evolving in the future?__

We believe that our strong 15+ year track record has helped build a compelling case for attracting greater private sector participation. This has been achieved not only through the positive financial and impact outcomes of Locfund, but also by demonstrating the resilience and long-term sustainability of the microfinance industry. Looking ahead, we are confident that within the next five years, we can significantly expand private investor involvement, targeting a share of at least 50% among Locfund Next’s key stakeholders.

__What are some opportunities you see for blended finance in Latin America? What are some challenges?__

Large players, including global investment banks, have begun exploring investment opportunities more actively in so-called “exotic” markets. Latin America, in particular, has demonstrated its ability to deliver attractive returns with balanced and manageable risk profiles. Public records indicate that blended finance structures in the region have averaged issuance sizes of approximately $150 million, underscoring the growing appetite and scalability of such instruments. 

Sectors such as financial inclusion, renewable energy, and circular economies stand out as key industries capable of absorbing substantial amounts of capital while offering compelling returns. The success of previous blended finance structures led by these institutions paves the way for future opportunities to mobilize private capital into the region.

However, Latin America is also characterized by a history of political volatility and recurring episodes of instability. These challenges can deter more conservative investors, especially when assessing opportunities that seek to combine financial returns with broader development outcomes.


Learn how BIM engages in blended finance, how they measure impact, their priority sectors, and more.