Empowering Capital.
Mobilizing Investment.
Shaping the Future of Blended Finance.

• Challenges and opportunities in mobilizing capital for ideas with clear impact potential
• How development finance ecosystem players think, operate and make decisions
• How mandates, incentives and institutional constraints shape what funders and investors can support
• Participants’ impact financing ideas, challenges, strategic questions and emerging insights

• Highlight how a small set of core financial products and tools — including grants, technical assistance, loans, equity, guarantees, insurance and other instruments such as derivatives — underpin blended and catalytic finance structures.
• Common structuring concepts, including capital stacks, funding continuums, first-loss positions and risk-sharing arrangements
• Key terms such as concessionality, additionality, risk, return and impact metrics — including why they matter and how they are understood by funders and investors
• Informal Q&A on financial terminology, structured finance concepts, transaction design and participant-specific questions

• ODA, concessional capital and agency agendas are all under pressure, with major development actors being pushed to mobilize private capital at greater scale.
• At the same time, funders, managers and proponents are operating in an environment where capital scarcity, strategic priorities and execution demands are all intensifying.

• Institutional capital — including pension funds, insurers, and other large pools of long-term capital — holds tremendous promise for scale, but has remained difficult to mobilize.
• The session explores key barriers to institutional participation — including credit risk, tenor, ticket size, liability fit, governance, hidden risk, liquidity, portfolio relevance, transparency and credible exits — while examining practical ways to reduce friction, strengthen investor confidence and unlock larger pools of long-term capital.

• Using IDB Invest’s novel synthetic risk transfer / securitization structure as a current market case, participants will unpack how MDB balance sheets, portfolio risk transfer and credit enhancement can mobilize institutional capital.
• The session makes a sophisticated transaction easy to understand — showing why it matters, how it works and what it may signal for the next generation of blended finance structures.

• Scaling and mobilizing capital increasingly depends on building investable platforms, portfolios and ecosystems — creating pathways to investability and bridges to bankability.
• The session explores how assets can be de-risked, aggregated and matured over time to support deeper investability.

• Can ecosystem-building approaches be transformed into bankable assets over time — and what would it take?
• Building from the earlier discussion on institutional investor barriers, participants explore methods and example pathways for building ecosystems that can strengthen scale, track record and investor confidence over time — helping create credible pathways to tap larger pools of long-term capital.

• The discussion steps back to consider why ecosystem-building matters over time — and how stronger pipelines, track records and market conditions can support future investability and access to larger pools of capital.

The afternoon session turns to the practical work of building momentum: aligning partners, addressing barriers, strengthening the proposition and improving the path from concept to committed capital — exploring why some deals stall while others gain traction, and what practical factors shape whether capital mobilization efforts slow down, fail or succeed.

• Development, trade and investment priorities are becoming more closely connected as countries seek new growth markets, new economic opportunities and resilient supply chains.
• Blended finance can help connect public-purpose objectives with private-sector capabilities, local market development and long-term investment pathways.

• Conversion is king: participants build facility with the critical concepts needed to shape more resonant proposals, avoid unnecessary pitfalls and move worthy ideas toward credible commitment.
• Many blended finance concepts stall not because the underlying idea is weak, but because missing elements, misalignment or avoidable red flags undermine confidence.

Sharpen your awareness of the key factors that influence conversion — including strategic clarity, stakeholder constraints, risk/return logic, concessionality, alignment and execution agility — using our new Conversion Readiness Framework assessment tool.

Participants work through a practical spreadsheet-based example to see how required returns, minimum return thresholds and upside limits interact — and how concessional capital changes the economics of a blended finance structure.

A candid conversation with a senior practitioner on what actually helps capital move — how funders and investors assess opportunities, where promising ideas often lose momentum, and what it takes to build trust, alignment and confidence across public and private partners.

• Bring together the day’s most resonant insights on capital mobilization, investor confidence, conversion readiness and the next generation of blended finance.
• Close with a forward-looking reflection on how participants can apply the day’s ideas to strengthen proposals, partnerships and pathways from concept to committed capital.

Participants are invited to continue the conversation informally over a networking reception and cocktails at a nearby Ottawa venue.

• Where private and institutional capital can realistically enter Canadian priority agendas
• What makes infrastructure, resilience, housing and public-purpose investment opportunities investable
• How catalytic capital can reduce friction, share risk and unlock participation
• Where impact investors, pension funds, insurers, banks and public actors can align
• How Canadian trade, development and investment priorities can connect to growth markets abroad

• A senior industry perspective on what it takes to align public priorities, private capital and institutional investment around credible opportunities.

• Identify where capital could move around infrastructure, climate resilience, housing, community investment or other public-purpose needs.
• Surface the key barriers, catalytic tools, partnerships or policy shifts needed to move opportunities toward investment readiness.

• Identify where development, trade and investment priorities can align around real market opportunities.
• Surface the catalytic capital, risk-sharing tools, partnerships or platforms needed to move from strategy to transactions.

• Brief read-outs from the two co-creation labs, highlighting key ideas, barriers and practical opportunities
• Shared takeaways on advancing credible public/private funding pathways at home and abroad

An informal opportunity for participants, speakers and invited guests to continue the conversation and build relationships following the workshop.