A well-functioning financial system is essential to economic resilience and growth. In 2025, our investments focused on expanding access to finance, strengthening financial sectors in more challenging markets, and deepening capital markets to mobilise more investment.
We work with banks and non-bank financial institutions to extend finance to individuals and businesses that are often excluded from the formal financial system, particularly in frontier markets.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, we committed financing to Rawbank to support lending to small and medium-sized enterprises. The investment strengthens access to finance in a highly constrained market and supports businesses that play a central role in job creation and economic activity.
We also backed Wave Mobile Money, a fast-growing fintech expanding affordable digital payments and wider financial services across West Africa, including into frontier markets such as Mali, Burkina Faso, The Gambia and Niger. By lowering the cost of transactions, Wave is helping make everyday financial services more accessible for millions of people.
Our portfolio continued to show progress in reaching underserved groups. In India, Shubham Housing Development Finance Company Limited (Shubham) is a specialist mortgage lender that provides home loans to lower-income families who are typically ignored by mainstream financial institutions. Leveraging tech-enabled solutions, such as data collection, predictive analytics and machine learning, Shubham helps applicants without formal documentation to establish their income and access loans. We first backed Shubham in 2021 and since then the company has significantly expanded its footprint, doubling its network to 200 branches and more than doubling the number of active customers to over 80,000. The share of sole women borrowers has also increased since our investment, alongside strong growth in women co‑borrowers, reflecting more inclusive access to housing finance for low‑income households.
Directed lending remains an important tool in ensuring capital reaches priority groups. In Pakistan, our facility with HBL is focused on food insecurity, directing half of the financing to smallholder farmers and supporting climate-resilient agricultural practices.
In 2025, the gross loan portfolio of our financial sector investments, converted to US dollars, stood at $166.8 billion. The rise in loans since 2024 reflects strengthened data coverage following the rollout of a new data collection platform – improving visibility of impact – alongside modest underlying portfolio growth.
The customers reached by our investments has risen to 213 million. This is primarily driven by the same improved coverage as seen in gross loans.
Trade finance is a core part of our financial services portfolio and a vital enabler of economic activity, particularly in markets where access to short‑term trade finance is constrained.
In 2025, we financed $715 million of trade flows in frontier markets, supporting cross‑border trade and helping businesses access essential inputs, reach new markets and sustain jobs. By sharing risk with partner banks, we help ensure trade finance continues to flow even in more challenging operating environments. New investments included our $50 million trade finance facility with Ghana International Bank to support more businesses and facilitate trade flows in frontier economies, including Sierra Leone, Liberia, The Gambia, Benin, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Tanzania.
Alongside strengthening financial institutions, we support the development of local and regional capital markets to unlock larger volumes of long-term finance.
In 2025, we committed to Nepal’s first green bond issuance by NMB Bank, channelling capital towards renewable energy and electric mobility. The transaction also mobilised domestic institutional capital, demonstrating how capital markets can support climate-aligned growth.
We continued to play an anchoring role in mobilising domestic capital. Building on the launch of Growth Investment Partners (GIP) Ghana in 2023, in 2025, we launched GIP Zambia in partnership with Zambia’s National Pension Scheme Authority (NAPSA) and Swedfund. Mobilising local pension capital in this case is expected to strengthen the long-term economic impact of the platform. Most recently, GIP Ghana welcomed funding commitments from Axis Pension Trust, a leading Ghanaian private pension fund, reflecting growing confidence in GIP’s model.
Our thought leadership during the year, including publications on securitisation and international corporate bonds, highlighted practical ways to strengthen capital markets across Africa and attract wider investor participation.
As part of our approach to sustaining impact over time, we also realised exits from mature investments in 2025. These exits enable us to recycle capital into new opportunities while supporting the long-term development of the institutions we have backed.
Our investment in a successful local currency funding model is helping fuel economic growth
of all Zambian businesses are MSMEs
Investment name: Growth Investment Partners (GIP)
Location: Ghana and Zambia
Investment type: Growth and Catalyst Portfolios
