February 28, 2024 -- Sao Paulo, Brazil
The last five years have been the weakest period of global economic growth in 30 years.
We know that governments, multilateral institutions, and philanthropies all working together aren’t enough to make adequate progress on our challenges.
We need the private sector.
The World Bank launched the Private Sector Investment Lab and recruited 15 of the world’s leading CEOs to identify barriers and potential solutions.
Four areas of focus have emerged from that group: regulatory certainty, political risk insurance, foreign exchange risks and an originate to distribute model.
We have made progress on each but are at the doorstep of delivering a seismic change to our political risk insurance platform, an essential step to meet our goal of tripling our guarantees business by 2030 – growing to more than $20 billion annually.
Aspirations that are shared by the G20 Expert Group.
Currently, we offer a range of guarantee products across the institution. Each with different processes, rules, and standards.
We have worked with the Lab to design a new platform that will deliver simplicity, access, and speed.
Beginning July 1, we will launch a one-stop shop for all our guarantees. This new marketplace is underpinned by several concrete changes.
We are moving all of our guarantee experts from across the World Bank Group under one roof.
We are compiling products into one a simplified menu. Making an easier user experience.
We will remove redundant processes like a requirement for independent and duplicative due diligence processes from institutions within the Group.
We are growing our teams outside of Washington by at least 40 percent over the next few years, and training country office staff as force multipliers.
And – we are building in a risk-weighted approach to reduce duplicative risk analysis and free up capacity to tackle more complex challenges and grow the business.
Reform is one part, innovation is another. We’ve now created a mechanism for MIGA to guarantee other MDB loans, freeing up capital and delivering on a recommendation by the G20 Expert Group.
We know our guarantees offer peace of mind to MDBs and private sector players alike.
But , we must do more to help the private sector navigate places and situations where their algorithms and expertise may not extend. We believe our data arms them with that confidence.
Before the end of March, we will publish sovereign default and recovery rate data dating back to 1985.
For years, the Global Emerging Markets Risk Database – GEMS – has compiled and shared private sector default data from across development institutions. GEMS is in the final stages of publishing for the first time private sector recovery data by country income level.
We believe this information is a global public good and sharing it will inspire confidence.
The combination our new simplified guarantee approach, with the new usable data for the investors will add up to one key result: Getting more private sector capital into developing economies to drive impact.
