Reflections from The Rockefeller Foundation’s AsiaXchange 2025 in Jakarta, Indonesia
Asia is no stranger to its transformative sustainable finance solutions. From pioneering microfinance to advancing inclusive fintech and payments, the region has long been a successful testbed for its innovation in solving its pressing development challenges. Home to vibrant, growing economies, this region has all it needs – capital, knowledge, expertise, and talent – to provide homegrown, regional solutions to bridge the USD 2.5 trillion annual financing gap to tackle acute climate challenges. However, closing this gap will require more than just capital mobilisation, it requires deeper collaboration and trust across institutions, investors, and intermediaries.
Building on the momentum from recent high-level dialogues – including the Asia Partnership for Investment into Resilient Economies (ASPIRE) Bellagio convening, the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4) International Business Forum in Seville, and AVPN Global Conference in Hong Kong – our engagement with Asia-focused leaders across government, the private sector, philanthropy and civil society crystallised a clear pathway forward, focusing on two key action agendas: (1) Unlocking supply through a Catalytic Capital Repository, and (2) Unlocking demands through effective country platforms. These action agendas are key to accelerating capital mobilisation and commitments for blended and innovative finance (BIF), overcoming policy and regulatory barriers at the national and regional levels, and facilitating country-to-country peer learning and cooperation.
On 6 October 2025, AVPN and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) convened a partner session, titled “Asia’s New Poly-tunity: Unlocking Catalytic Capital & Country Platforms for Blended Finance,” at the Rockefeller Foundation’s AsiaXchange 2025 in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Utilising an action lab format, the session brought together over 50 global and regional leaders to collectively discuss solutions in scaling blended and innovative finance in Asia – specifically, the creation of a regional catalytic capital repository and country-led financing platforms.
During the session, we heard insights from our ASPIRE Ambassador Group members, representing the two workstreams:
Unlocking Supply through a Catalytic Capital Repository
- Tracy Wong Harris, Executive Vice President of Hong Kong Green Finance Association
- Shaun Seow, CEO of Philanthropy Asia Alliance
Unlocking Demands through a Country Platform
- Bambang Brodjonegoro, Dean of ADB Institute
- Murizah Osman Salleh, Deputy Director of Central Bank of Malaysia
The discussions were insightful, practical, and solution-oriented. Here are the key takeaways from the session:
Transparency Gap
A major challenge in scaling BIF is the limited visibility of catalytic capital. And to solve this supply-side issue, efforts must focus on increasing both the transparency and the size of the catalytic pool. Emphasis was placed on identifying willing and capable organisations to establish a trusted, scalable finance platform for all parties to collaborate.
Untap Capital from Family Offices
Family offices in Asia represent a significant opportunity for increasing the size of the catalytic pool. It remains an underutilised source of concessional capital, despite strong interest in nature-related projects, revealing a significant mismatch between supply and demand.
Creating An Effective Narrative
Persuading philanthropists to take a concessionary position remains a challenge, as they tend to focus on direct impact. Hence, it is essential to design ‘spot-on’ narratives, as each philanthropist approaches deals with distinct impact lenses and exclusion criteria, and may be cautious about merely subsidising private capital returns. For example, the narrative could focus on potential returns, making the case that a USD 1 investment could fund a downstream project worth USD $10 or USD 15, thereby illustrating how concessional capital enables significant mobilisation of private capital and positioning philanthropy as a crucial enabler – moving from subsidising capital to catalysing impact.
Trust infrastructure for Capital Collaboration
While a catalytic capital repository would enhance data transparency, surface potential partners, and increase visibility of project pipelines and investable opportunities, its real value lies in functioning as a flexible trust infrastructure rather than a static database. A platform that enables secure, purpose-driven data sharing can better connect funders and intermediaries with existing market infrastructure. By moving beyond transaction facilitation, such an approach can foster a robust ecosystem in which governments, private investors, development finance institutions, and intermediaries build trust, align incentives, and collaborate more effectively.
The Role of Government as Orchestrator
Drawing lessons from Indonesia’s Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP), it is emphasised that governments must act as orchestrators to build cohesive project pipelines aligned with appropriate financiers. Government leadership will create a stronger demand for BIF when there are clear structural programmes, supported by policy, regulation, and a cohesive ecosystem to overcome bureaucratic and regulatory hurdles.
Develop Strong Partnership to Address Market Frictions
The Climate Finance Innovation Lab (CFIL), launched by Bank Negara Malaysia in June 2025, successfully generated 23 projects with over USD 800 million in funding within four months. This was achieved through collaboration among development financial institutions, government agencies, multilateral development banks, philanthropies, and project owners to co-create practical, scalable solutions that address market frictions by reducing search costs, improving project proposal narratives for investors, and integrating impact data into performance metrics. A key best practice shared for this country platform is the imperative to maintain openness, agility, and adaptability to evolving market environments before fully implementing standardisation.
Trust as a Foundation
A central consensus that emerged from the discussion was the importance of building trust between commercial funders, catalytic funders, intermediaries, and governments, which is fundamental to successful collaboration and long-term investment. As climate mitigation projects could take 15 years to deliver measurable outcomes, trust becomes essential because capital decisions are ultimately made by individuals. Sustained, person-to-person engagement is therefore necessary to navigate structural complexities, address regulatory hurdles, and reconcile different requirements among philanthropic concessional capital providers.
Looking Ahead
The mission is clear: overcoming the significant challenges of supply and demand requires strong people-to-people connections, trust-building, collaboration, and systemic improvements to scale blended and innovative finance in Asia effectively.
Moving forward, ASPIRE aims to bring these agendas and ideas to key international and multilateral platforms, such as the World Bank 2026 Annual Meetings in October, to secure a landmark commitment to advance Asian-led financing solutions for the SDGs.
About ASPIRE
The Asia Partnership for Investment into Resilient Economies (ASPIRE) is a multi-stakeholder initiative that seeks to build and activate a coalition of Asian philanthropies, development financial institutions, governments, and private investors to co-create a regionally grounded development finance agenda.
ASPIRE aims to operationalise solutions through three primary levers: policy unlocks, data infrastructure, and platform development. By supporting governments, investors, and intermediaries in building the enabling systems necessary to mobilise blended and innovative finance at scale to Asia, ASPIRE aims to catalyse scalable, people‑centred finance for climate action and the SDGs in Asia.
