Source: BMZ Press Release, 2 June 2025

SCALED, formerly known as the Hamburg Sustainability Platform (HSP), was initiated by the Governments of Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, South Africa and the United Kingdom, the private investors Allianz SE and La Caisse, and the OECD in October 2024 at the first Hamburg Sustainability Conference (HSC). AXA SA and Zurich Insurance Group have joined since then. SCALED is a multi-stakeholder initiative with the aim to mobilise large-scale private investment as a contribution to closing the SDG financing gap in emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs). SCALED foresees the creation of an entity which shall streamline and scale the development and management of blended finance vehicles in close cooperation with public investors and private asset owners, thereby alleviating key bottlenecks in the existing blended finance landscape.

Blended finance vehicles tend to be complex and customised, which makes them cumbersome to set up, replicate, and scale. The time required to set up vehicles often spans several years. At the time vehicles are finalised, the market context may have changed. These conditions reduce their attractiveness to private investors and hinder the development of a diversified and liquid market.

SCALED applies a novel approach to address the before-mentioned challenges: it will establish a pure play entity dedicated to streamlining the entire development and management process of public-private cooperation for blended finance transactions, especially targeting large institutional investors. The entity is foreseen to (a) virtually pool required private and public capital (soft commitments), (b) make use of standardised, pre-configured vehicles, contracts, and reporting, (c) actively facilitate faster and larger first closings of vehicles, for which then (d) adequate managers will be identified who shall manage the investments on the ground and continue to raise funds for the new structures.

Read the full press release here.