Advisory
Individualized service and unrivalled experience
Development Finance
The world of development finance is complex — governments, private funders, multilateral institutions, structured products, risk allocation. Whether it’s for municipal infrastructure in Canada or micro-credit in Ghana, the ever-changing market needs and motivations can seem overwhelming.
We understand the landscape and know the players, including investment funds, government agencies, multilateral lenders, commercial banks, and project sponsors.  We are a thought leader on emerging trends and activities, including the convergence internationally of aid, trade, and investment. Where others see complexity and challenges, we see motivation and opportunity.
We help you understand the bigger picture and how you fit in, so you can achieve results quickly and confidently.
Risk Management
We help clients manage the evolving complexity of their financial and operational activities. Public and private sector entities alike face growing pressures from the changing needs of their customers and stakeholders. Taking on prudent risks in achieving your objectives requires having in place the right policies, procedures, processes, tools, and people.
We can help you better understand your risk environment, and enhance your risk management approach in a scale-appropriate, best practices manner, tailored to your type and scope of financial operations. We can help assess your organization’s risk literacy, so that risk management becomes better understood and ingrained. A proper risk management orientation leads to better, faster decision-making, while ensuring oversight and accountability in achieving your goals and objectives.
We ensure best practice principles around key risk categories including credit, market, operational, and reputational, all integrated with your existing approaches to ensure smooth evolution and growth in risk management capacity. Application of 1st Line of Defence (1LD), 2LD, and 3LD principles throughout governance mechanisms and committees, as well as policies, procedures and processes, is particularly important.
Learning & Knowledge
People excel in their work when they have the right tools and knowledge. Solutions can only be implemented if everyone shares a common understanding of the problem and speak the same technical language. That’s where we come in.
Crystalus  offers a spectrum of learning and knowledge services, from formal training courses to one-on-one mentoring. In each case, we ensure a tailored, experiential approach designed to elevate your organization and its people to a higher plane. We routinely receive overwhelmingly positive feedback from our knowledge sessions, which are at once entertaining, engaging, and insightful.
Financial & Strategic Advisory
Clients rely on us for clear, effective advice to achieve their strategic objectives in finance and risk management.
Whether it’s developing a new funding program or venture, or enhancing an existing one, we can help you every step of the way.  We advise clients on business planning and financial modeling, capital structuring, new funding products, program evaluation, and peer benchmarking.
Our recommendations are sound and straightforward, and we back them up by working with you and your staff to get everything running smoothly.
Mobilize Capital
We believe that the right approach, tailored in the right way and for the right audience, will unlock capital. And we’ve proven it over decades and around the world, working with countless borrowers and funders, closing billions of dollars in financing.
We’ve worked on all sides of the equation – public, private, lender, borrower, investor, investee. We know how the other side thinks, what information they want (and don’t want), and how they make decisions. We have an extensive network of senior relationships with leading funders on all continents.
We can help you achieve your funding objective.
Infrastructure Projects
Infrastructure finance has many challenges, with myriad players – project sponsors, financial arrangers, government agencies – and complicated funding structures. Successful financing approaches rely on careful integration of various market participants, including public lenders, private funds, commercial banks, capital markets, and institutional investors.
We understand the market landscape, funding preferences, and financial instruments, including blended debt, equity, and grant structures. We work with funders, sponsors, and governments to achieve results, both for individual projects, as well as broader public policy initiatives.
Outsourced Credit & Due Diligence
Today’s world of development finance is complex, involving a dizzying and ever-changing array of financing structures, capital providers, and financial intermediaries.
Whether you are making a one-off loan or launching a new funding program, Crystalus can help with credit assessments, deal structuring, term sheets, due diligence, and document negotiation.
We augment and support your in-house personnel, expanding your capacity to get deals done to exacting industry standards.
Live Expertise
Some clients don’t have a specific pressing issue, but want access to regular, ad hoc advice and support over a period of time. We understand that, and are happy to provide on-call services. What you want, when you want it.
Clients can pick up a phone or ask for a meeting to discuss specific issues, receive mentoring or advice, or simply bounce ideas around.
Our Approach
Clear, Trailored, Actionable
Clear
You have a goal in mind, but the path is complex.
We keep things simple so you can succeed. We take complexity and break it into understandable parts. Then we distill the key issues, devise a plan to achieve success, and execute it.
By keeping things simple, we help our clients avoid pitfalls and blind alleys. We ensure they make efficient use of resources, and – ultimately – we help them save time and money.
Tailored
One-size-fits-all approaches are doomed to fail.
We recognize that you are unique and so are your challenges. We take the time and make the effort to understand your environment, both at a detailed operational level as well as within a broader strategic context.
Then, we tailor workable solutions that are customized to the scale and complexity of your needs. Never more, never less.
Actionable
We don’t just provide recommendations. We implement solutions.
It’s easy making recommendations. There’s no stake in whether they can be implemented, or if they can actually solve the problem.
We have a stake in our clients’ problems and solutions. We stay around to make sure the right solutions solve the right problems. And we help you and your staff up your game so you can carry forward once we leave.
Get in touch
Let’s discuss how Crystalus can help you.