Credit Infrastructure

The World Bank Group works to improve insolvency and debt resolution frameworks in emerging markets as part of its broader mission to promote private sector development.

In the insolvency and debt resolution sphere, the IFC’s efforts typically focus on:

• Strengthening legal and institutional frameworks for corporate and individual insolvency, ensuring predictable, transparent, and fair processes.
• Advising governments on reforming insolvency laws and regulations to align with international best practices.
• Capacity building for courts, regulators, insolvency practitioners, and other stakeholders to handle restructurings and liquidations efficiently.
• Supporting out-of-court workout mechanisms and early resolution tools to help businesses restructure debt before formal insolvency.
• Promoting creditor rights and balanced debtor protections, fostering confidence among lenders and investors.
• Encouraging development of professional insolvency practitioner networks and registries.

The aim is to reduce the costs and time involved in resolving distressed assets, preserve viable businesses and jobs, return value to creditors, and ultimately improve the investment climate by making capital recovery more efficient and predictable.

Emerging technologies — such as big data, fintech, cloud computing, distributed ledger technology, and AI — are reshaping credit reporting. They allow credit reporting service providers to process larger, more diverse data sets more quickly and efficiently, creating opportunities for innovation but also raising questions about cost, models, and regulatory requirements. IFC helps markets manage both the opportunities and risks of these technologies while continuing core credit reporting reforms.

Key areas of IFC support:

• Technology innovation: Diagnostics on technology readiness; tools and roadmaps for adoption; guidance on vendor selection; and support to regulators in creating enabling environments for proven technologies.
• Global knowledge: Research on key emerging technologies, their use cases, prerequisites, challenges, and cost-benefit considerations.
• Alternative data: Assessing alternative data landscapes; supporting legal and regulatory reforms; piloting models to test predictiveness; and building capacity on data management and innovative scoring, including a global toolkit for replication.
• Regulation Technology / Supervision Technology: Mapping supervisory needs and opportunities; supporting development of RegTech/SupTech and APIs for automated reporting; piloting solutions; and training supervisors and market participants, with guidance materials on best practices.
• Automated platforms and predictive risk/management tools for industries such as agriculture: Diagnostics and market assessments for agri-finance; development of psychometric tools and digital platforms; and capacity building for financial institutions.
• Cross-border credit information sharing: Diagnostics and support for customer-centric data-sharing platforms; piloting cross-border sharing within a regional bloc; and developing global guidelines through the ICCR.

The Credit Infrastructure team manages the Global Financial Infrastructure Program (GFIP), a partnership between IFC and the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO). The program supports the development of legal and regulatory frameworks for secured transactions, credit information, and insolvency, along with the electronic systems and broader ecosystem required to implement them.

GFIP aims to expand access to finance for MSMEs, women-owned businesses, underserved individuals, and, where relevant, corporates through securitization solutions. It also produces global knowledge materials for wider application.