2025 was an exciting year for Convergence, we celebrated our tenth anniversary and hosted our inaugural Global Blended Finance Forum. To wrap up the year we’re sharing a list of our most impactful content of 2025, featuring the reports, case studies, blogs, and op-eds that our audience engaged with the most throughout the year.
Top Report: State of Blended Finance 2025
Released in May, the State of Blended Finance 2025 found that the blended finance market remained steady through 2024. Blended finance deal flow was higher than the market average for the past five years, with 123 deals reaching close totaling $18 billion in financing. Deal sizes were also trending upward, with the median size increasing from $38 million (2020 - 2023) to $65 million (2024).
The report also found that in 2024 there was more buy-in from the private sector. Commercial capital from private sector investors outpaced development finance institutions and multilateral development banks in capital deployment, with $6.9 billion in investments in 2024.
Top Data Brief: Blended Finance for Nature-Based Solutions
This brief analyzes how blended finance has been used to support nature-based solutions (NbS) transactions, presenting insights from an analysis of transactions in Convergence Market Data and interviews conducted with industry stakeholders.
With the global annual investment gap to safeguard the natural environment exceeding $700 billion, there is a critical and urgent need to scale up financing for NbS. Public and philanthropic capital alone cannot meet this challenge. Convergence has recorded 48 blended NbS transactions over all time, totalling $4.7 billion in aggregate financing. Currently, public funds account for a total of 82% of the annual financing flows to NbS, with private finance accounting for the remainder.
Read the blog to learn about key takeaways from the brief.
Read the full brief. (members-only)
Top case study: Bac Ninh Waste-to-Energy Facility
This case study explores how the International Finance Corporation (IFC) used blended finance to improve the investability of the Bac Ninh waste-to-energy (WtE) facility in Vietnam.
Vietnam's waste management issues are increasingly urgent. However, the implementation of an adequate waste management system has been impeded by several factors. The resultant financing gap has created a market failure, whereby critical high-impact potential waste solutions like WtE technologies are unable to access the capital required for implementation.
IFC, using blended finance from the Finland-IFC Blended Finance for Climate Program alongside a market-rate loan for its own account, targeted the key market barriers to financing WtE facilities in Vietnam. Their participation, alongside grant funding support from the Government of Japan, bridged the financing gap by absorbing a level of construction and operational risk that otherwise prohibited the commercial viability of the Bac Ninh WtE facility.
Top op-ed: To mobilize private capital for sustainable development, we need standardization at scale
This op-ed by our Managing Director Chris Clubb, published in Environmental Finance, explores why standardization at scale is key to mobilizing private capital for sustainable development.
Chris discusses Convergence's Scale Private Investment Mobilization Project to standardize and scale up effective and proven Private Investment Mobilization Models, creating a framework that makes it easier for private capital to flow into developing countries for sustainable development.
Top blog: Breaking Down the Billions: A Closer Look into Convergence’s Design Funding Program’s $2 Billion Mobilization Figure
This blog delves into how Convergence-supported blended finance solutions have successfully attracted substantial capital, breaking down the types of investors involved and the specific financial vehicles utilized. It also provides insights into what makes certain blended finance models effective and scalable, and highlights lessons learned from smaller-scale projects like Africa GreenCo, which showcase innovative approaches in high-impact sectors.
