Despite near-universal access to financial services in advanced economies, financial exclusion is stubbornly persistent in many emerging markets, leaving huge swaths of low-income populations unbanked or underbanked. FinTech companies, which apply innovative technologies to deliver such services...

Sustainability-linked finance is designed to incentivize the borrower's achievement of environmental, social, or governance targets through pricing incentives. Launched in 2017, it has now become the fastest-growing sustainable finance instrument, with over $809 billion issued to date in...

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic hit the tourism industry particularly hard, affecting livelihoods and exacerbating some pressures on the natural capital resource base. Supporting the tourism sector recovery is an opportunity to build back better, ensuring that business investments lead to a...

This 100th EM Compass note explains why it is important to ‘create markets’ to promote development, and how development finance institutions and impact fund managers can draw on IFC’s Anticipated Impact Measurement and Monitoring system to assess the contribution of their investments to...

Blended concessional finance, the combination of commercial funds from development finance institutions (DFIs) and the private sector with concessional finance from public institutions, foundations, or other contributors, has become much more prominent in recent years as an effective method of...

Summary of Note 98 : Private Credit in Emerging Markets. Private credit broadly refers to nonbank lending to firms. Since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009, private credit has grown considerably. Although the phenomenon of private credit is more predominant in the United States and the...

Tertiary and vocational learning is widely recognized as critical for all countries’ economic success. While progress has been made toward achieving the fourth United Nations’ (UN) sustainable development goal (SDG 4) by 2030 - ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote...

The accelerated use of digital services during the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of high-speed Internet access. Yet a large share of adults in emerging markets still live in cities where the availability of high-speed Internet is limited. There is a strong case to be made for...

At the beginning of the 20th century less than 15 percent of people across the globe lived in cities. This figure has risen to 50 percent (4.4 billion people) today and will exceed 66 percent (7.7 billion) by 2050. There is a significant shortfall of housing to meet the needs of people moving to...

Sharing mobile network infrastructure through specialized companies called towercos is a business model with the potential to accelerate access to quality mobile connectivity for individuals and businesses in emerging markets. A significant number of developing countries have yet to adopt this...