AIMM Dimensions

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The Anticipated Impact Measuring and Monitoring (AIMM) system evaluates a project’s development impact along two dimensions: project outcomes and market outcomes.

Project Outcomes

Along the project outcome dimension, the AIMM system assesses a project’s effects on stakeholders, the economy, as well as the environment and society.

Stakeholder Effects

Assess the incremental benefits that accrue from an IFC intervention for customers, suppliers, employees of the company receiving financing, as well as local communities. For financial intermediaries, stakeholders include recipients of loans or other financial services.

Economy-Wide Effects

Constitute indirect or induced economic outcomes like externalities and spillovers that are generated by the project’s linkages to the economy. IFC uses economic modeling tools to estimate ex-ante effects on value added and job creation.

Environmental Effects

Relate to environmental and social sustainability outcomes such as the reduction or avoidance of greenhouse gas emissions, improved water efficiency, reduced pollution, biodiversity effects, and/or improvements in social welfare not captured as part of a stakeholder or economy-wide effect.

Market Outcomes

The AIMM system assesses the degree to which an intervention improves the structure and functioning of markets by promoting one or more of the following objectives.

Competitiveness

Competitive markets are characterized by effective entry, exit, and expansion of firms that compete and innovate to improve efficiency and productivity. These markets have enabling infrastructure and regulatory interventions that ensure enforcement of marketplace rules. Key outcomes include reduced market power, higher productivity, better quality and variety of products, efficient pricing, and improved market infrastructure. 

Resilience

Resilient markets can anticipate, survive, adapt to, and grow from acute shocks and chronic stresses. They adapt through diversification of inputs, products, or markets, introduction of shock-resilient technologies and processes, and improved regulation and market infrastructure. Resilience highlights the ability to curb contagion risks and sustain operations during crises. 

Sustainability

Sustainable markets exchange goods and services considering environmental and social value, risks, and opportunities. They aim to improve social wellbeing and maintain long-term environmental health. Sustainable markets focus on inclusivity, ensuring fair access by marginalized groups to goods, services, finance, and economic opportunities, addressing global ecological and social challenges.

Market Catalytic Effects

IFC investments have the potential to deliver a range of market catalytic effects, from transformative, to market deepening and market sustaining effects.

Innovation and Scalability

The measurement of market catalytic effects in AIMM is anchored on two key components:

Innovation is defined as the implementation of new or significantly improved products, services, processes, practices, and marketing and organizational methods compared to the status quo or existing norms. For example, a project may be deemed as high innovation if it supports introduction of a novel product, service, technology, business model, or practice in the market. Innovation may also include several incremental changes such as improving operational efficiency and adopting new business practices to improve the quality of a product, or service over several delivery channels.

Scalability broadly encompasses two features, one related to the innovator itself, and the project it is promoting, the other to the enabling conditions. The first feature of scalability relates to the visibility of the innovation in the market. The second feature of scalability includes the elements that affect broader market uptake of the innovation such as customer demand; competition policy, existing competitive pressures; the innovator’s strategic linkages with other firms and public or private research institutions; the infrastructure and institutional framework; the capacity of other firms’ capabilities to understand, replicate, adapt or respond to the innovation; and/or overall human capital in the economy, as relevant for the market analysis.

  • Transformational Effects

    These effects are created by projects or programs that bring about systemic changes in key market characteristics by substantially increasing productivity, reducing costs overhauling the market structure, or introducing other forms of disruption in ways that can be replicated or contested by other firms through innovation.

  • Deepening Effects

    Market deepening effects are associated with projects or programs that help deepen an existing market by enabling new players to enter normally competitive markets and/or improving or expanding incumbents’ existing products, processes, business models, or supply chains – relative to ongoing trends.

  • Sustaining Effects

    Projects or programs are expected to create market sustaining effects by supporting the continued functioning of existing markets without substantially altering their structure and helping incumbent companies either continue their growth path or catch up with other leading companies. They also include counter-cyclical responses to keep market activity steady during different business cycle phases or shocks.

  • Modest Effects

    Expected of investments that support at best the continuous micro innovations by individual firms (such as micro innovations deriving from tacit knowledge embedded in the routines of firms and their employees and suppliers) that can be invisible or hard to quantify at an individual firm level.

Impact Potential

Sector frameworks help assess desired effects by assigning ratings in four areas:

  • How big is the problem IFC is seeking to address? 
  • How much does the project contribute to the solution?
  • Based on the problem and contribution, what is the potential to deliver desired effects?
  • What are the estimated risks associated with achieving the development outcome targets?
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Project outcomes dimension

The gap analysis is an assessment of the relative size of the development challenge that each desired effect is addressing. When compared to other emerging markets and developing countries within the same sector, the gap assessment will identify where a country falls along a spectrum.

A project’s contribution to overcoming development gaps is measured by its intensity. Along the project outcomes dimension, project effects are assessed for the degree to which they are contributing to a solution. The assessment is based on sector-specific benchmarks that are normalized so that small but well-targeted projects are not penalized.

Once a gap assessment is paired with an intensity assessment, an overall potential impact rating is assigned. The potential for a particular effect to generate impact is a function not only of the scale of the problem (how wide the gap is), but also the efficiency of the intervention (its intensity). This approach gives greater weight to projects addressing wider development gaps and/or projects that are innovative or creatively designed to deliver outcomes efficiently.

Market outcomes dimension

A similar gap assessment is made using market typologies to describe different stages of market development. The market creation dimension assigns stages to market development for each of the five market attributes. The AIMM system defines how developed the market is by situating the current market in one of these stages.

A project’s contribution to improving the structure and functioning of markets is measured by an assessment of the market catalytic effects. 

The potential impact rating of market outcomes is derived by combining the market stage assessment and the assessment of the market catalytic effects. The potential for a systemic change in the market is a function of both the stage of market development and the catalytic change that IFC expects its project to generate. The rating system gives greater weight (assigns higher potential ratings) to effects that address the widest development gaps. Detailed mappings of market gaps and stages along with potential project intensities and market catalytic effects are set out in the respective sector frameworks.

Risk Assessment

A risk assessment within the AIMM framework involves assigning a qualified or unqualified rating to a project’s development impact on both dimensions: project outcomes and market outcomes. The risk ratings reflect the materiality of estimated risks associated with achieving the expected development outcome targets. Risks are categorized as unqualified (mitigable risks) or qualified (material risks, i.e., cannot be entirely mitigated). 

The AIMM system helps IFC better select, design, and manage interventions to maximize development impact while ensuring sustainable financial returns.

AIMM Rating & Score

An ex-ante AIMM rating is based on a series of qualitative judgements that are converted into a score.

IFC uses AIMM ratings to better select and design interventions that maximize impact. The aggregation of AIMM scores for different business segments helps IFC manage its pipeline of interventions and develop strategies to address deficiencies. Portfolio ratings will also help IFC balance strategic priorities in pursuit of the portfolio approach, which seeks to maximize development impact consistent with the need to generate sustainable, risk-adjusted financial returns.

Last updated: January 2025