The development finance system of institutions holds immense value. Part of this value lies in the data yielded by their unique experience of lending and investing across developing economies. Sharing this data could accelerate our efforts towards sustainable development by enabling creativity, lowering the cost of capital for key stakeholders and harnessing competitive forces. Transparency has its costs, but these pale in comparison to the costs of prolonged opacity.

Risk transfer and securitisation have at long last been admitted to the development finance conversation. Perhaps owing in part to its contribution to the global financial crisis, any mention of securitisation in development finance circles is typically met with a varying mix of excitement and concern. It may therefore prove useful to demystify a comparatively straightforward mechanism and to assess the potential of its use to accelerate the financing of sustainable development.

This study investigates and compares the funding models of three of the 17 main bilateral DFIs. Its objective is to encourage conversation around their respective merits and demerits, to help stakeholders make informed decisions regarding the DFI’s balance sheet options and the use of debt capital markets-based leverage. This paper has been prepared as an input to the discussion on mobilisation in the OECD Development Assistance Committee CoP-PF4SD.

As the development finance system of institutions scrambles to mobilise capital markets, accurately assessing progress is necessary to develop an understanding of what the most effective strategies and instruments are, and what simply does not work. The adoption of methodologies delivering an overly optimistic picture of current achievements conversely presents a direct threat to the ability of the system to deliver on the objectives set by shareholders.

As global crises mount DFIs are increasingly being called upon and resourced to address these issues. It remains a challenge to know what investments are being made and the impact these are having. This report presents the findings of Publish What You Fund’s first DFI Transparency Index. The DFI Transparency Index is a comparative measure of the transparency of thirty leading DFI portfolios.

Numbers have a stubborn tendency to develop a life of their own. Measurements morph into targets, targets turn into ceilings, ceilings inevitably lead to optimisation, and the dynamics of optimisation create incentives. Incentives have real life consequences. The modernisation of the DAC Statistical System and the rules it sets for ODA reporting have far reaching implications for development finance.