Development & Policy Finance

7th century onward · over 1,300 years ago

Mudarabah and qirad partnership contracts financed merchant enterprise across the Islamic world

Profit-and-loss-sharing agreements let capital-holders fund trading ventures without charging prohibited interest, spreading along Islamic trade routes from Arabia to North Africa and South Asia and prefiguring modern equity and venture financing.

1840s · over 180 years ago

Britain's railway boom pioneered mass private financing of infrastructure

Joint-stock companies raised unprecedented capital through public share and bond markets to build railway networks, establishing the template for private-sector infrastructure finance before a speculative crash wiped out much of the capital raised.

1869 · 157 years ago

The Suez Canal was financed through international share and bond issuance

French and Egyptian capital raised through the Universal Suez Canal Company funded construction of the waterway, an early example of large-scale cross-border project finance for infrastructure later mirrored across the colonial and postcolonial world.

1944 · 82 years ago

The Bretton Woods conference created the World Bank

Delegates established the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development to finance the rebuilding of war-damaged infrastructure, later broadening its mandate into long-term development lending across the world.

1953 · 73 years ago

The United States established the Small Business Administration

The agency introduced federal loan guarantees for small businesses unable to meet conventional bank collateral requirements, a model of state-backed SME credit support that many other countries later adapted.

1956 · 70 years ago

The International Finance Corporation was created as the World Bank Group's private-sector arm

The new institution financed private enterprises, including small and medium businesses, in developing countries where commercial banks were reluctant to lend, establishing a model later copied by regional development finance institutions worldwide.

1966 · 60 years ago

The Asian Development Bank was founded to finance regional infrastructure

Established by regional governments with support from Japan and the United States, the bank became a principal source of concessional and market-rate finance for infrastructure and development projects across Asia and the Pacific.

2008 · 18 years ago

The global financial crisis triggered a lasting SME credit crunch

Bank deleveraging and tighter lending standards cut small business credit sharply across advanced economies, prompting governments to expand credit guarantee schemes and paving the way for alternative lenders to fill the gap banks left behind.

2008 · 18 years ago

A group of financial service providers and stakeholders formed the Finance Alliance for Sustainable Trade (FAST)

Financial service providers and other stakeholders came together to establish FAST, an alliance directed at improving access to finance in sustainable trade. It represented an institutional attempt to address the SME financing gap through coordinated action among lenders.

July 2008 · 18 years ago

The Network for Governance, Entrepreneurship & Development defined the category of Small Growing Businesses (SGBs) at a Geneva workshop

At a workshop hosted in Geneva, SMEs falling into the financing gap between microfinance and commercial bank lending were designated Small Growing Businesses. The label gave donors and financiers a shared term for the segment of firms too large for microcredit but too small for conventional business finance.

2013 · 13 years ago

China launched the Belt and Road Initiative

The programme committed state and policy bank finance to ports, railways, power plants and other infrastructure across dozens of countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe, becoming the largest cross-border infrastructure financing effort of the century.

July 2026 · last month

China continued rebalancing its Africa infrastructure lending

Policy bank lending fell from a peak of $28.8 billion in 2016 to $2.1 billion in 2024, with individual project financing caps now tightly monitored and credit redirected toward green energy transition and Digital Silk Road projects.

May 2026 · 3 months ago

India banned more than 600 illegal lending apps in a broadening crackdown

The Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre also ordered Google to remove six loan apps within 36 hours over blackmail and data-harvesting complaints, as the Reserve Bank escalated action against predatory digital lending.

• Kenya passed a law curbing digital lender harassment

March 2026 · 5 months ago

The OECD found SME loan stocks broadly stagnant despite easing credit conditions

The Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs 2026 scoreboard reported that borrowing costs remained high relative to pre-pandemic levels and banks kept lending terms tight, weighing on small firm liquidity and investment across member and partner economies.

• Public venture capital schemes tilted toward green and deep tech

2026 · this year

Gulf investors moved to help close Africa's $80 billion infrastructure financing gap

The Africa-Middle East Corridor initiative aims to mobilise capital for infrastructure, deepen African debt capital markets and expand cross-border investment, as Gulf capital stepped into space that China's policy banks had begun to vacate.

September 2025 · 11 months ago

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) published guidance on digital MSME banking

The handbook set out how banks and fintechs can use alternative data, digital onboarding and embedded finance to reach micro, small and medium enterprises that conventional collateral-based lending continues to exclude.

February 2025 · last year

Malaysia opened banking data to third parties for SME credit assessment

Phase 2 of the Open Finance Framework let approved third-party applications access credit card and investment account data with customer consent, giving lenders richer information to price and extend SME loans.

Mid-2025 · last year

Indonesia extended digital identity to 50 million citizens

The Identitas Kependudukan Digital rollout enabled one-click onboarding for lending and investment platforms, cutting the paperwork that had kept many small businesses and individuals from accessing formal SME credit.

2025 · last year

India unveiled a DPI@2047 roadmap to widen SME credit access

The two-phase digital public infrastructure plan set out steps toward a $30 trillion economy by 2047, building on a surge in fintech-disbursed digital lending that has begun narrowing the country's large SME credit gap.

• Digital lenders took on a growing share of new SME loans

2025 · last year

Southeast Asian fintechs moved to close a $300 billion SME credit gap

Digital lenders expanded data-driven credit assessment across the region as investors committed an estimated $6 billion to $8 billion in fintech funding during the year, with growth-stage equity accounting for roughly 60% of the total.

December 2024 · 2 years ago

Singapore licensed three digital wholesale banks for SME lending

The Monetary Authority of Singapore approved the licences to target underserved SME lending and cross-border treasury services, extending the city-state's digital banking framework beyond retail customers into business finance.

2016 · 10 years ago

China founded the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

Headquartered in Beijing, the multilateral lender was created specifically to finance roads, ports, energy and other infrastructure across Asia, growing within a decade to more than 100 member countries and positioning itself alongside the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.