To meet development challenges that are not sufficiently addressed by existing funds and financing mechanisms, the World Bank sometimes partners with other institutions or organizations, such as other multilateral development banks or United Nations agencies, to support collective action through large global or regional initiatives, implemented through FIFs. FIFs are a special type of trust fund that provides large-scale funding for broad, coordinated interventions, usually focused on themes, and typically aimed at achieving GPGs.
The World Bank has a large and growing portfolio of FIFs. Since the establishment of the first FIF in 1971, total cumulative funding to FIFs as of end-FY19 has amounted to $104.4 billion, of which $7 billion was contributed in FY19. The number of active FIFs has more than doubled from 12 at end-FY08 to 27 at end-FY19. The World Bank serves as limited trustee of all FIFs, providing a set of agreed financial services that include receiving, holding, and investing contributed funds, and transferring them when instructed by the FIF governing body. Under some FIFs, the World Bank also provides customized treasury management or other agreed financial services, such as bond and swap issuance, hedging intermediation, the purchase of insurance products, and monetization of carbon credits. In addition, the World Bank may host a FIF’s secretariat. The World Bank and IFC can serve, alongside other entities, as implementing entities to which
the trusteeship transfers resources. Recent independent evaluations of FIFs hosted by the World Bank have found that the operations of FIFs are supported by strong management systems and financial controls and that hosted secretariats benefit from the strengths of the underlying infrastructure provided by the World Bank.