Introduction
Asia is not lacking in capital. The region is home to fast-growing pools of private wealth, a rising generation of impact-oriented investors, and globally recognized financial hubs in Singapore, Tokyo, and Mumbai. Yet climate and SDG finance in the region remains severely underfunded, with a USD 2.5 trillion annual SDG financing gap[1]. The problem, then, is not a lack of capital, but a mismatch between where capital sits and where it is needed most.
Recent dialogues convened by AVPN at The Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center Convening Program and the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4) point to a consistent set of systemic barriers. These were synthesised into six interlinked challenges: Pipeline, Project Structuring, Products & Data, Partners, Platforms, and People-centricity. These “6Ps” reflect the core challenges to aligning capital with climate and development priorities in Asia.
Why Early Collaboration Still Falls Short
Early-stage collaboration between public, private, and philanthropic actors remains limited, contributing to fragmented investment efforts and inconsistent signals to the market. However, emerging models such as the Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs) and regional platforms like FAST-P demonstrate how public-private alignment and incentive orchestration can help unlock investment. AVPN and its partners are now focused on enabling similar models by convening catalytic capital actors and facilitating shared due diligence and platform design. This is precisely the type of early collaboration that AVPN is working to catalyse through platforms like the upcoming AVPN Global Conference 2025 in Hong Kong. With about 1,500 delegates expected, the Conference provides a critical space to move from diagnosis to action. Sessions such as “Structuring for Scale: The Future of Blended Finance” and “Investing in Collaboration: Scaling Blended Finance Across Asia” will bring together real-world deal designers and regional stakeholders to explore how blended finance can become more replicable, standardised, and scalable.
The need for such approaches is urgent. The bespoke nature of most blended finance transactions restricts scale. While tailored structures tailored to sector needs and funder objectives are important, they also increase transaction costs and complexity. To accelerate deployment, the field must adopt a more modular and replicable approach, through standardised templates, capital stack frameworks, and deal design playbooks that reduce friction for both investors and intermediaries.
Crucially, future structures must be designed for people-centric impact. Market-oriented tools alone will not reach underserved populations or sectors. In Indonesia, MSD illustrated how the Government of Indonesia and the World Bank created a blended finance structure to support public health outcomes, such as HPV vaccine adoption, where returns alone would not justify investment. These approaches must be scaled carefully, with attention to equity, local priorities, and adaptive delivery models.
Introducing ASPIRE: A Systems Approach to Mobilising Capital
To address these challenges, AVPN and partners launched ASPIRE – the Asian Partnership for Investment into Resilient Economies. ASPIRE aims to operationalise solutions through three primary levers: policy unlocks, data infrastructure, and platform development. Over the next 18 months, ASPIRE will support governments, investors, and intermediaries in building the enabling systems necessary to mobilise capital at scale.
Source: BCG Analysis
Next Steps
The AVPN Global Conference 2025 in Hong Kong will be a key milestone in advancing this shared agenda. The conference will bring together capital providers across the spectrum, philanthropy, public finance, development institutions, and private investors, to translate lessons into action. With dedicated programming on impact investing and sustainable finance, it will serve as a platform to test ideas, build alliances, and co-design solutions grounded in Asia.
Furthermore, these efforts will converge through a series of high-level convenings, including AsiaXchange and the IMF–World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok, where ASPIRE will continue to convene stakeholders and surface regionally grounded solutions. We invite collaborators across sectors to engage with this agenda. The challenge, moving forward, is not how to find more money, but how to move the right capital to the right places, at the right time, with the right partners.
[1] https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/06/blended-finance-asia-sustainable-development-goal-investment-gap/
