Innovative Finance to Expand Access to Healthcare: Opportunities for Business

This paper—an output of the Healthcare Working Group and the first sectoral guide on the topic—aims to catalyze more innovative finance partnerships that unlock new and greater sources of finance to advance access to quality healthcare around the world. Three trends are converging to create a new wave of opportunities for corporations’ social and commercial innovation agendas. First, companies from many sectors are striving to pilot and scale new business models to bring critical products and services to under-served consumers. Second, impact investors—who invested more than US$22 billion in 2016—are seeking new investment opportunities that deliver financial and societal returns. Third, governments and international agencies are using development budgets in new ways to leverage private-sector capabilities and partners to tackle the US$2.5 trillion annual funding shortfall to implement the SDGs.