1. Who We Are

Financial Intermediary Funds (FIFs)

What are Financial Intermediary Funds?

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  • Financial Intermediary Funds (FIFs) represent a distinct mechanism for partners to come together to address critical development challenges. The World Bank Group provides administrative support to FIFs. 

    FIFs are large, multi-partner financing arrangements that enable the international community to pool and coordinate resources from many sources. FIFs address global development challenges such as extreme weather, pandemic preparedness, and the impacts of fragility, conflict, and violence. They are independently governed, with the World Bank Group holding no decision-making authority. Instead, the World Bank provides financial and other services to support FIFs’ funding efforts and decisions.

  • The World Bank Group is currently Trustee for 26 Financial Intermediary Funds (FIFs).

    FIFs are financial arrangements that typically leverage a variety of public and private resources in support of international initiatives, enabling the international community to provide a direct and coordinated response to global priorities. FIFs often involve innovative financing and governance arrangements as well as flexible designs which enable funds to be raised from multiple sources, both sovereign and private. Funds can be channeled in a coordinated manner to a range of recipients in the public and private sectors through a variety of arrangements. FIF structures are customized, depending on the needs of the partnership and agreements with the Bank. 

    Most FIFs support global programs often focused on the provision of global public goods; in particular, communicable diseases and responses to climate change. Recently established FIFs have aimed to address food security challenges and natural disasters.

  • As Trustee, the World Bank provides a set of agreed financial services for all FIFs that involve receiving, holding and investing contributed funds, and transferring them when instructed by the FIF governing body. Under some FIFs, the Bank also provides customized treasury management or other agreed financial services; some examples include bond issuance, hedging intermediation and monetization of carbon credits. The Bank also performs the following roles for all FIFs: accounting, reporting, financial and fiduciary management, and the adherence to established procedures and internal controls. 

    FIF Trusteeship does not involve overseeing or supervising the use of funds. This is the role of other implementing agencies that receive funding and are responsible for project or program implementation. Transfers are generally made by the Trustee to external agencies for the implementation of activities. In the case of FIFs whose governing bodies have the legal and other required capacities to take on responsibility for the use of funds, the Bank transfer funds received from donors directly to multiple third party entities, usually in recipient counties, based on instructions from and on behalf of the governing body. 

    In addition to its trustee role, the Bank may be involved in the various capacities:
    • implementing agency responsible for appraisal and/or supervision of projects or programs financed by the FIF; 
    • providing secretariat services to the FIF; or 
    • being a FIF donor.