Roundtables - Business Roundtable (WUF13)

Incredible discussion.
I'm really looking forward to this roundtable.
We'll be looking at de risking housing finance and unlocking private capital for adequate housing at scale.
But first, to welcome us to this session, and it's my pleasure to introduce Edlam mero, the Chief of global Knowledge and Innovation branch at UN Habitat.
Hello, Edla.
Hello.
Yes, please.
Thank you so much, Carlotta and good afternoon everyone.
It's a real pleasure to be here with you today and welcome again to this round table.
At this round table, UN habitats role is really just to convene everyone and this platform is for you.
This platform is for all of us.
The focus of this particular wolf on the global housing crisis, and this roundtable could not be any more urgent.
It focuses on a challenge that affects at least 3.4 billion people globally.
That just gives a sense of the magnitude of what we are looking at.
That's the number of people that face inadequate housing globally.
We're here to look at what solutions could work in advancing progress in that respect.
Here at the World Urban Forum, our intention as UN Habitat, is to create a space for private sector, for public institutions, policymakers, local and regional governments, civil society, and many others to take action to take collective action together.
And this session is exactly about that.
It's a space designed to create synergies and partnerships to unlock private capital for adequate housing at scale.
At UN Habitat, our four year plan, starting this year, places housing, land, and basic services at the center of everything that the agency does.
It explicitly identifies the private sector as an indispensable partner in delivering that agenda.
We cannot close the housing finance gap through public resources and action alone.
Our strategic plan for the next four years is very clear.
Mobilizing private capital alongside multilateral development banks and international financial institutions is not just an add on.
It is central to our theory of change.
This roundtable is part of how we make that real.
Wolf 13 will produce a backup call to action.
The conversations in rooms like this one will shape the backup call to action.
We as UN habitat are here to facilitate, to listen, and to ensure that what the private sector shares and what the private sector considers as priorities will be reflected in the commitment of this forum, in our work at UN Habitat, and in the delivery of our global mandate.
That is our role as conveners and that is why the World Urban Forum is the most influential platform on sustainable urban development globally.
Beyond the backup call to action, we are looking for partners who are ready to move from dialogue to delivery.
Looking ahead, we have plenty of opportunities for concrete joint action.
We have a chance to map a clear roadmap for partnership to culminate at Wolf 14 in 2028.
In today's conversation, share with us your thoughts on how to make this happen.
Where are the most critical opportunities for us to unlock private capital for adequate housing at scale? What solutions are most promising? What are your proposals for action, importantly, action at scale.
What commitments should we all be making at this forum, and how do we go from commitment to delivery together? At this Wolf and at this forum, our focus is on action.
I invite all of you for being part of this journey, and I want to thank each and every one of you for your interest, for being here, for the conversations that are happening not just in this room, but in every corner of the World Urban Forum.
I invite you to stay with us not just at this forum, but also in the journey that continues after this World Urban Forum.
So thank you once again and we look forward to what's going to come out of this roundtable today.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Edlam.
Now, to set a bit of the scene of the discussion we're about to have, as we all know, the global housing crisis is not a question only of supply.
It is fundamentally a question of capital risk and delivery systems.
As you've been hearing in speeches here at Wolf throughout the week, today more than 2.8 billion people live in conditions of housing inadequacy, with the world needing to deliver a staggering 96,000 adequate housing units every single day by 2030 to meet demand.
Now, nearly 90% of that need is concentrated in sub Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia.
We are not dealing with a marginal policy challenge, but with a structural failure in how housing is financed and delivered and yet the capital exists.
The IFC estimates a 16 trillion financing gap in emerging markets alone, not because investment capital is unavailable, but because the enabling conditions to deploy it consistently and at scale are often missing.
Across conversations throughout the year at the World Economic Forum at MIPIM and increasingly here at the World Urban Forum, there's a strong consensus that is emerging that the central constraint is unmanaged risk.
Policy volatility, weak planning systems, insecure land tenure, and fragmented project pipelines, and also limited local delivery capacity continue to prevent housing from becoming investment ready.
But at the same time, housing is beginning to be reframed.
It's no longer seen simply as a social obligation, but as a long term economic and investment opportunity provided, of course, that the right conditions exist.
We're talking about predictable policy, scalable finance systems, effective de risking tools, and a stronger alignment between public priorities and private capital.
It's precisely, just as Ed Lam was saying that this conversation matters here at Wolf and why we wanted to bring all of you together because the actors in this room collectively shape the environment in which housing capital either moves or stalls.
Today is all about alignment, what investors consider non negotiable, what public actors must enable, and what models can genuinely mobilize capital towards inclusive, resilient housing at the scale that this urgent crisis demands.
So let's turn to our first panel and we'll be hearing from people on both sides of the room to make sure everyone is paying attention and keeping up with the incredible conversations we're about to have.
The first panel will be asking a very simple question.
What makes a market investable? Question might be simple.
The answer we shall see.
Across regions, the message from investors and developers is remarkably consistent.
Capital flow follows stability.
Policy predictability, planning certainty, land access, and credible project pipelines are not optional.
They are preconditions for this investment at scale that we've been discussing.
We want to bring these perspectives from public finance, development, housing markets, and global real estate to examine what those enabled conditions look like in practice and where do they continue to break down.
Please join me in welcoming our panelists for this very first session.
We've now mixed everyone.
Lindsay is over there.
Lindsay Neely, who serves as the Vice President for policy at Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
Welcome.
We have Shekhar Patel, who serves as the President of Credii the Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India, which is the largest body representing private developers in one of the world's most complex and therefore consequential housing markets and Keisha Rust is the Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa, which has produced the Housing Finance in Africa yearbook for 16 consecutive years tracking precisely how housing finance is across all 54 countries on the continent.
And then we have as well António Campagnoli who is the president of Yasi, the International Real Estate Federation, a global body that brings together professionals across more than 40 real estate disciplines.
Then at the very end, I believe we have Kamil Aliyev, the head of Business Development at PMD Group, which is the biggest real estate developers in Azerbijan.
Welcome all to the session.
Welcome.
Well, I want to start precisely with you, Lindsay, with the first question.
We know that the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, CMHC, has operated one of the world's most sophisticated public mortgage insurance systems for decades.
This has really enabled thousands of units to be financed at scale.
But Canada is also part of this crisis.
It still needs 430,000 to 480,000 units to be built by 2035.
So the instrument exists, the institution exists, the capital exists.
How far down the income ladder can the tools really realistically reach and what we need to change in policy planning or market structure to go further? I'm curious on where exactly does the supply chain break and it's a case of affordability or access to finance? Please go ahead.
Thank you so much.
It's a great pleasure to be joining everyone at this roundtable today and very pleased to be representing Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
In fact, this year, CMHC is celebrating 80 years.
We've been in place since the Second World War.
CMHC was originally established to house World War two veterans and their families and continues to play a leading role in Canada's market based housing system today.
CMHC is a federal crown corporation in Canada that reports to the national government and to the Minister of Housing, infrastructure, and communities.
And CMHC's housing finance toolkit has been longstanding.
Mortgage loan insurance and securitization programs continue to provide access to home ownership, new rental housing supply, and a reliable source of funding for lenders.
Mortgage loan insurance in particular, serves as an important de risking tools to allow private investment as CMHC provides full guarantees against losses as an insurer, which helps lenders provide mortgages to prospective home buyers, to developers of multi unit residential housing, and in terms of helping to lower borrowing costs across the board.
Notably, CMHC also delivers a direct lending program called the Apartment Construction Loan Program.
It's a $55 billion fund that provides low cost construction loans to developers of purpose built rental housing construction.
Across these financing tools, CMHC continues to support the majority of rental housing construction in Canada.
CMHC securitization programs also date back more than 40 years.
We deliver a National Housing Act mortgage backed securities and Canada mortgage bonds programs.
These were established to improve liquidity in the mortgage market, to reduce funding costs for lenders, and to support availability of mortgage credit across the economic cycle.
In this way, we found that the securitization tools in particular have been quite effective during times of economic stress and crisis, such as the global financial crisis and the COVID 19 pandemic.
In addition to financing, CMHC provides housing research, data, market insights and information to help decision makers with more information on the housing system, as well as the mortgage market in Canada.
And since the launch of Canada's first national housing strategy in 2017, CMHC has also played a lead role in delivering housing programs and affordable housing initiatives on behalf of the government.
This has included programs that offer both low cost loans, which is typically a role for CMHC, but also non repayable contributions, so really targeting more deeply affordable and mixed income housing.
As you mentioned, like other nations, however, Canada is experiencing a severe housing affordability crisis and supply gap.
There's simply not enough public money available to fill that gap.
We've estimated that in Canada, it's close to $1 trillion.
Our experience tells us that housing systems and incentives need to be structured so that capital can flow at scale and target different affordabilities to truly make a difference.
That leads me to my first point about how this works in markets.
Number one, investors and builders need certainty.
Mobilizing private capital into housing requires stable market conditions and confidence that projects are feasible and can be viable over the long term.
Even where financing conditions are enabling, broader dynamics can still reduce certainty and project viability for builders, particularly builders of affordable housing.
Canada is a federation and so that means we have a highly decentralized housing governance system.
Beyond the federal government, we also have provincial and territorial governments, municipalities, and indigenous governments that each have distinct but complementary roles in delivering housing in communities.
This creates a patchwork or a system with varying regulations, different approval processes, and really quite different market conditions across the country.
And these differences affect project certainty and housing delivery timelines.
In Canada, the building environments are quite different across urban centers, rural and northern areas ranging from cities like Toronto and Vancouver or largest municipalities in the country to small towns with no more than 20 permanent residents.
So really, there's a flexibility and a tailoring of approaches that's needed.
And what we see in this decentralized environment is that long development timelines, approval delays, and high fees can materially affect whether housing projects are feasible and if they can go ahead.
Delayed occupancy and extended timelines expose projects to cost inflation and to interest rate volatility.
And so these risks sit largely outside the financial system, but really speak to the need to ensure that planning, finance, and development systems are consistently rolling in the same direction.
My next point is that financing alone can't deliver deep affordability, at least that's been the experience in Canada.
There are limits to how far financing tools can realistically reach down the income ladder and across the housing continuum.
Canada's estimated supply gap is 430400-80 thousand new units required to be built each year until 2035 to restore affordability.
A huge housing supply gap, and this is really where it's felt most acutely in lower income and deeply affordable housing, and yet this is exactly the space where it's difficult to attract non government sources of funding because there aren't sufficient returns in this space.
Canada's share of non market housing is approximately three to 4% and recent policy changes have focused on expanding the supply of affordable housing and accelerating the pace of housing development.
Recently, the national government in Canada has established a new housing agency called Build Canada Homes that is focused on building more mixed income, more deeply affordable housing projects, and really trying to establish partnerships with the private sector to bring more capital into this space.
I think that's really the opportunity that lies ahead and it's an important conversation to continue to be having in terms of how do we scale existing tools that are working and how do we explore new tools that can bring more capital into this space by aligning public policy goals with incentives for investment.
So I'll end by saying that Canada's experience demonstrates that strong public mortgage insurance, lending, and secutization systems can successfully mobilize private capital into the housing space, but also that financing alone cannot solve some of the affordability pressures and housing supply gap challenges that we're seeing, and building on existing tools, as I said, in exploring new ones may offer the best path forward.
Thank you.
Thank you, Lindsay.
Thank you very much.
I want to bring now into the conversation, Shekhar, because we know that India's affordable housing segment has contracted sharply.
Not because demand has fallen, but because the economics behind delivery have broken down.
When the policy framework no longer reflects the market realities, we know that developers tend to exit that segment.
What would it take to actually get them back and what must change in order to make affordable delivery viable again? You have to press the button.
There you go.
Thank you.
Thank you to the United Nation habitat.
I would first to begin with a very basic and important point about the affordable housing in India.
India's affordable housing problem today is not the demand problem or a supply problem.
It's the problem of the definition, which is not changed since last eight years.
So there is still a strong demand in 60 meter to 90 meter lower cost housing and middle cost housing.
There is still a higher demand and developers understand that there is a demand, they supply also in this category, 60 to 90 meter category.
But because of the old definition, the current definition in India is 60 to 90 meters as per the size square meter as per the size, and they have a price cap of 45 acro is roughly $42,000.
This definition was introduced in 2018, 1919, probably eight years before and since then, Indian inflation is averaged 6% every year, the raw material cost has increased, the land prices has increased, infrastructure cost has increased, and many other related costs have increased.
Because of that, housing price cost has increased eight to 10% every year in last eight years.
The home which cost 90 meter home which cost you 45 rupees or $42,000 in 2018 is roughly costing you around double.
But the the definition is the same.
That 60 meter and 90 meter home, I think 60 meter to 90 meter home size is the basic necessity of any family.
It's a basic home.
It's not a luxury home.
But in India, because of that 45 is cap, this supply is there, demand is there, but this home doesn't qualify in the affordable housing category.
Because of this problem, you can see that the data has that problem.
Whatever the data comes from India for the affordable housing.
They consider affordable housing below 45, they don't consider affordable housing 60 to 90 meters.
Because of the problem, you see the dip in the affordable housing demand and supply.
But actually, it is not reality.
Actually, if you go by the housing size, supply is there, still demand is there, but it doesn't qualify in the affordable housing.
This is the main reason this is the problem for Indian affordable housing segment and for Indian middle class and lower middle class because In country like India or country like any other developing nation, you have to categorize affordable housing and premium housing differently and government have to give the benefit in affordable housing to make it viable for the home buyers and I think mainly all the developing countries, they consider real estate or housing sector as a cash cow and more city level taxes, state level taxes and country level taxes, if you put all this together, it comes around 35 to 50% of the sale value of the unit.
So and customers he pays whatever for the housing out of that 35 to 50% goes to the government and this is not sustainable.
For this, you need to correct affordable housing definition and you need to work on that affordable housing definition should not be capped by the price, it should be capped by the size and city definition and public demand.
So we have to work hard.
In India, we are working on this since last three, four years discussing with the government that this kind of a policy, this price cap is creating a larger problem and those people who buys house in 60 meters to 90 square meter in India currently, they don't get any benefit of affordable housing benefits government of Puna is giving right now.
So that's why we are working on this and a mainly, most of the points I covered, but my humble request to habitat and the urban community thinkers that, at this forum, the people here, the panel here, we should discuss and we should come out with the affordable housing definition in a deep manner, the size of the house, the city and the scale of the country, the economy of the country, we have to keep everything in mind.
If we want to keep a price cap, we can do a price cap, but it should be linked with the inflation and housing price increase with the respective state and respective governments.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Keita, turning to you next.
Now, we know that as I mentioned when I introduced you, you produce CAPS Housing Finance in Africa yearbook, which is the 16th edition, 54 countries.
It really tracks down how formal housing finance, where it reaches and where it does not.
From that data, what are the what are the investment fundamentals that determine whether a housing market attracts capital at all, and what do African markets tell us about the conditions that need to exist before the financing instrument can work? Thank you very much.
It's really so nice to be here and to be in this discussion with everyone here.
Our yearbook, we started 16 years ago and we did it actually because as a very young Center for Affordable Housing Finance at the time, we were receiving a lot of information that wasn't written down and we were talking to businesses and lenders and developers and so on.
It just felt like there was all this information that hadn't been captured and so we thought we better write it down.
We started and we did that.
And at first it was following what we did.
Now we follow the yearbook.
And I think the fundamental thing is market information.
In fact, where you see the growth of housing finance markets, it's where there's information, which makes sense because people go to a market that they can see, or they, they start to expand in a market that they can see and that they understand.
So we could talk about the whole value chain, about all of the gaps along the value chain, and that is discussed over this whole week.
Um, the thing that makes the market investable, obviously is fixing those things.
But tomorrow morning, it's more about knowing what those things are to figure out how to work your way around them because there are many things that we want to fix that aren't going to be fixed by the time the capital is there right now.
And so collecting the data specifically and being able to count, there are countries in Africa where We're really struggling to count how many mortgages there are.
Now, that's crazy because a mortgage is a regulated instrument, the central bank should have that data, and I really hope they do, but they're certainly not sharing it within the public space.
That's a pretty fundamental indicator to no mortgage to GDP ratio.
We struggle every year to understand that.
If we're lucky, sometimes we only get it from a PowerPoint presentation that someone delivered.
Doesn't exist anywhere else.
A lot of times they're quoting what we said last year, which is also a danger.
It's not a frivolous requirement.
The other thing though, is that the market segment that we're looking at that in fact needs attention is one that is very poorly documented and on purpose because it's hiding, because the systems and processes of the regulatory frameworks don't respect how it operates.
The majority of people on the African continent are informally employed.
They are earning incomes, that are earning, but they're small incomes and they come from multiple sources in different ways.
And to be able to demonstrate what that is and how that looks is critical for then an investor to say, Well, yeah, okay, I can do something with that.
I can start to develop a product around it.
Um, putting the data into the yearbook though is really, really not enough, and we've done lots of other studies too, and it's available on our website, and still there are funds that arrive and they can't find projects or that go ahead and they build, and then can you imagine the houses are not occupied at the end because they were built for the wrong people, the wrong price range, right? So some governments defining affordable housing as something about $100,000 because in their mind, they've been reading the New York Times as opposed to their local paper, but what constitutes affordable and there's a disconnect between the way policy drives and what the situation is on the ground.
That's the point you were just making as well, and there is an aspiration for a particular market which simply does not exist.
We then have to figure out, and that's I think all of our jobs, how to make that data alive.
For the people who need to work with it.
What does it look like in real life as opposed to what we think in a paper? Then to start looking at where the activity is already.
Just to give a very quick example, we looked at the census in Kenya, came out in 2009 and 2019 and censuses are so valuable and often not done.
But in Kenya, that ten years, the government says that the country is building 50,000 units a year.
Well, it's in those ten years, the number of households, let me get this number.
The number of households that said that they were renting increased by 1.6 million.
That's what 160,000 households per year, new households every year saying that they're renting, which must mean that someone is building those units for them.
That's about 78% of the urban population in Kenya, and then 89% of those are renting from private individuals.
Now, there's an interesting market.
Some of those buildings are not beautiful.
In fact, very many are not beautiful and require serious investment.
There's an opportunity because you've got this whole economy that's happening that has escaped attention, and yet it is the majority of the population in the country.
To make a market investable, you mentioned stability and certainty.
We need that and that's a policy framework.
You need to have it in terms of information and to really feel it and work with that.
I'm going to put that on one side and say just one more thing if it's okay.
I The Center for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa, my organization, we operate as a Secretariat for an industry body called the African Union for Housing Finance.
That's a collection of banks and building societies and developers and so on that operate across the continent.
Last year, we had a conference, we have it every year in about October, November.
Last year we were in Nairobi and the focus was on blended finance.
There was a paper that we produced together with convergence around it was a playbook for blended finance and affordable housing.
That's available on our website, which gets into a lot of these things.
At that meeting, the Nairobi statement which came out of the members, they agreed at the AGM, they said four other things which I just want to drop in for others to take out.
The first one was obviously it's the stability of the policy framework.
It's great.
Within that is the cost of capital.
Because it's very difficult to offer affordable housing loans if the investment opportunities elsewhere are such that the interest rates are going to be very, very high.
Cost of capital where you have treasury bill notes, risk free government bonds are attracting at a very high interest rate, it's extremely difficult to then offer capital into affordable housing markets at a low rate.
In fact, you can't.
The second was currency risk because we have a lot of interest in international funders who are wishing to engage and support and even on the DFI side, wanting to come in and provide that, but the hedge is so expensive, it's seriously not worth it.
There are some institutions that in fact, the gift they were given is sinking them because of the currency situation.
The third one is getting back more into the housing space, and that's about area based investment on the part of the government at a local level, and there the integration of infrastructure with your intentions for housing.
That can happen first and it would be really nice in fact, if it did because there are developments where the development is quite nice and beautiful, but to get to it, you need a four by four because the road hasn't actually been built.
Then the last one was relating to.
So, that's it.
The enabling environment was together with that one.
So those are critical issues that need to be addressed as well.
We fed them in for the Baku call to action because I think there should be in this space, some a macro assistance, certainly with those two about the capital, the currency risk and the cost of capital, some way to address that.
Thank you.
Thank you, Keisha.
António, coming to you next, obviously with the experience that Fibs has globally, leaning in on that, I wanted to get your take on what does functional land planning and regulatory governance actually look like in practice and what is the minimum threshold below which no financing instrument can compensate.
Actually, this issue bring me to me to the fact that how the private sector can participate to the development of the city.
Sometimes we speak about risk and discussing between our association and I don't tell you that there is some also friction between us because to speak about public and private in a private association sometimes can be difficult.
We have a different language, communication and stuff.
But what I can say that today, the risk, we believe that the housing finance and the resilient community as a central point, that the risking and how we can risk the investment and strike to attract the long term capital.
We study some model, Canada, in Europe, Austria, and there are some model like this and a Sometimes one of the least of risk is the risk is not only financial, of fragmentation, lack of trust, of governance, of instability, as we said, as absence of long term relationship between institution, investor, and communities.
And why we start to introduce a concept that I strongly believe it can be a practice at the risk in framework for the future sustainable urban development that we call and not we call but is the doctrine five P model.
Usually it's three P public private partnership, introducing people policy.
Because no ctic can be resilient if these five dimensional remain disconnected.
Traditionally, we have relied mainly on public private a partnership, and today is no longer enough.
The people dimension is fundamental.
Community cannot simply be passive beneficiary of urban transformation, and they must become stakeholder of the process.
When citizens participate, project gain legitimacy.
When local communities are involved, conflict decrease.
When such organization are integrated, the long term stability increase, and these directly reduce the risk.
At the same time, policy is equally essential.
Without stable and predictable frameworks, even the best projects struggle.
Long term capital require regulatory continuity, institutional accountability, and transparent governance.
These are particularly important for institutional investors, pension funds, international capital.
They're not only evaluating financial returns, they're evaluating long term variability entire urban ecosystem.
Then finally, the key word is partnership, really partnership between private and public.
No occasional cooperation, no isolated transaction, but a long term ecosystems.
Because cities are not successful simply because they are built wealth.
They are successful because they are managed well over decades.
This is where I believe the five P approach because I threw the risk in my model.
It reduced financial risk because project become more bankable and such accepted.
It reduce political risk because the secular are aligned.
It reduce operational risk because governance becomes more collaborative and reduce such a risk because the communities become part of the solution.
In many parts of the world, we are entering a period where public resource alone will not be sufficient to address the other increases.
At the same time, private capital alone cannot solve the problem if disconnected from public purpose and suimity.
The future therefore depends on our ability to connect to this dimension, and this is why I believe the next generation of urban development will not be defined only by technology, finance, or construction capacity.
It will be defined by quality of relationship between institution, markets, and people.
VP model is ultimately not only an urban model, is a government model, trust model, and increasingly the risky model for sustainable investment and resilient communities.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you, António.
Next, I want to bring in Camille to the conversation.
Thanks for joining us.
From the perspective of being one of the major private developers here in the region, what are the key conditions needed to de risk housing finance and make long scale residential development more attractive for private capital? Thank you very much.
It's an honor to represent PMD Group.
As a matter of fact, within the next three years, we as a private developer, are going to commence 3,500 residential units in all over the country in Azerbijan.
Our developments are located not only in Baku, but also in Karabakh and Eastern Zangzu region, including Krusia, Aghdan, anghian and other cities which are now rapidly being developed.
From private developers perspective, de risking housing finance starts with predictability.
Private capital needs a clear framework.
Stable regulation, transparent permitting, reliable infrastructure delivery, and financial instruments that make long term investment commercially viable.
Public authorities have an important role to play, preparing serviced land, simplifying planning procedures, and supporting infrastructure.
Developers in turn must bring strong project discipline, market research, realistic pricing, good design, phase delivery, and long term quality management.
In Azerbaijan, demand for better housing is strong.
But to unlock private capital at scale, housing should be seen not only as a social need, but also a structured investment product.
That means projects need clear cash flows, bank ability, affordability, and long term asset value.
When public policy and private sector execution work together, housing finance becomes less risky, more scalable, and more attractive for investors.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I want to open now the floor to all the panelists for some questions and engaging in a bit of a discussion.
I'll throw some questions out there and whoever wants to take them, please raise your hand.
But one of the themes that came up throughout all the interventions is this notion of transparency, access to data, dialogue, and and communication as well.
I wanted to perhaps ask first about the building of trust.
We know that the building of trust between government and the private sector together sometimes remain as a challenge.
How can they do so even in difficult market environments? Perhaps, Skar, you can go first.
Trust worth is very important for the real estate sector trust between the government, developer, and customer as well.
Before 2017 in India, there was a deficit in the real estate sector, but government out with a very good regulation called RR Real Estate Development and Regulation Act and post that in that if any developer is starting any new project, housing or a commercial or retail, he has to give all the details about the project, all the approvals about the project, Then he get the final certificate from the Ra authority, and then then only he can start the project, he can start marketing of the project.
So because of the Ra, trust has come to the market.
Customers were happy that their money is protected by the Ra authority.
Developer is happy that a or has come to the market and government is happy because this sector was not regulated before 2017 in India, now it is totally regulated and working well.
In last nine years, the result of this REA Act is market is very positive.
Customers are not afraid to invest in the project finance sector like housing finance and all, they are not afraid to invest or loan the project or housing loan also they are not afraid.
I think this is very good example.
I can send you the detail about this Red authority.
Maybe some countries have have this kind of authority, but some countries developing countries or underdeveloped countries can adopt this kind of authority.
Thank you.
Thank you, Keita.
You were nodding along there as well.
Yeah, thanks.
Trust is iterative.
It grows with experience.
I think a very useful tool which covers a number of goals is to use the intention for data and information as the way to build the trust.
I'll show you mine if you show me yours, we bring it together, and then I benefit in terms of the business I want to do because I've seen what you've presented.
I think there's a third category or character in this.
You've got the government and the private sector sharing their data.
It's useful to have someone facilitating that.
That's neither government nor private sector.
We did this in South Africa where we didn't understand there's so many institutions that are tracking the property market.
It's a beautiful luxury property market in South Africa, but no one is tracking what was happening at the bottom end of the market.
We put all of that on a map.
A map is a beautiful thing.
Because you can't really fight it.
People start to see it as familiar, and then you add more data to it and they grow to accept it and it becomes less anxious making.
That requires investment by all of the parties though, and it's It's a hard thing to sell in advance because people don't even trust that they're going to trust.
But we've seen it work where you create a map, you put the data there, then that becomes part of what people are talking about.
It becomes part of the error that they're working in and through that, they come to understand one another better.
An investment, it's something that would be critical for you and habitat to do as an interlocutor or others.
An investment into creating a data platform where the parties can put their information to better understand what the landscape is and then they know how to act.
Thank you.
It's interesting.
It's been great to hear everyone's interventions because we have a national housing finance institution, a developer and a developer Federation, a housing finance data specialist, a global real estate body all around the table.
I really am curious about what is the most important point of convergence between all of you as actors and where perhaps is the sharpest point of tension? Where does that balance lie? I'll throw to this side of the table to Lindsay perhaps.
Yes.
Thank you.
Just picking up on the last point, I think data is key for building trust, and I think it's incumbent on governments to really create the conditions where data can be shared and shared broadly, but also creating a building environment that's stable and predictable over the long term.
I've talked about how Canada's system is highly decentralized.
We do work with many orders of government to help create those conditions because the federal government doesn't hold all of the levers.
While we have a number of housing finance tools that are deployed, we do work with municipal governments to ensure that there's clear zoning in place, that permitting and development processes are predictable.
And I think this is where the opportunity as well lies ahead in terms of connecting housing finance systems and tools with local delivery systems.
And I think that can be attention, but it also can be that key opportunity so that those systems work together and really drive that certainty over the long term.
Thank you.
I'm afraid the clock is against us, but I want to make sure, António, that we come to you before we wrap up, even if briefly, but I'm curious on this point of the coverage and tension between the different actors.
When you're working with the community at Fabsci where do you see that? What do your partners tell you are those points that stand out? It's funny because sometimes when we speak about some concrete case, where the community started to gather together is mainly around sports, church, and sometimes medical centers.
It's not really housing.
But if you think about housing as a place where to live, If you have a park, if you have a place to stay, if you have a place to play, to go to mass or to go to pray, is something that made the community.
Basically, in our little experience, the relationship to the community is born in these places where the people meet.
It seems too easy, but is where we in our little experience find a soccer field is more than a soccer field sometimes.
Correct.
Well, thank you very much and please join me in thanking our panel.
Thank you very much indeed.
Now, we have spent the last 45 minutes examining what makes housing markets investable.
Before we turn to risk and resilience, which will dominate our second panel, we have asked Emmanuel Norma of Sangoban to reframe the question.
Sanba is one of the world's largest sustainable construction companies.
Emmanuel has spent years at this intersection of climate science, building performance, and long term investment logic.
The question he is here to address is deceptively simple as so many of the questions we're asking here today, but what does it cost to do nothing? Emmanuel, the floor is yours.
No, thank you.
Can you hear me? Yes, we can.
Okay.
Perfect.
Dear fellow panelists, they're all sorry not to be with you in presencing in Baku.
Of Sangoban a global materials manufacturing company were present in more than 80 countries with the purpose to make the world a better home.
Let me reflect on what we have already heard and how Sanoban is understanding the evolution of sus stable construction as being an enabler of affordable housing for all.
Actually, I believe that sustable construction is entering a new phase.
For years, the discussion was largely framed through an environmental lens and mitigation.
And today, the discussion is becoming broader.
It's increasingly tied to risk exposure, long term performance, resilience, and the ability of communities to withstand shocks over time.
Sangoa, we are performing a yearly survey on sustable construction.
This year, interviewing 4,800 stakeholders of the construction value chain, as well as 30,000 citizens in 30 countries across the globe.
This year edition of the barometer shows that awareness regarding sustainable construction is already high globally.
67% of stakeholders say they know exactly what sustable construction is about, and 94% have at least heard of it.
But there's a clear gap in implementation in whether sustainable construction is actually integrated into the systems that shapes the built environment, what gets financed, what gets procured, what gets insured, and what gets built.
The barometer makes this implementation gap very visible.
Only 30% of professional say they already carry out sus stable projects, while 55% say they intend to do so.
Among local elected officials, 86% say sustainability is an important criteria in public procurement, yet only 20% say they have already rejected projects that did not incorporate sustainable construction methods.
The issue is no longer only ambition, it's implementation inside real decision making system.
Particularly, one of the strongest signals emerging from this year's barometer concerns resilience.
Resilience is gaining ground in how stakeholders define sustable construction, particularly in regions already significantly exposed to climate stress.
For example, in Africa, 42% of stakeholder now associate sustable construction with the ability to withstand natural and climatic hazards.
In the Middle East, 41%.
In many parts of the world, climate adaptation is no longer perceived as a future concern.
It has become an immediate operational reality and is also immersed clearly in the qualitative survey conducted this year with financial actors, including bank and insurance.
So nevertheless, one recurring observation was that resilience remains difficult to integrate into decision making framework because the economics are symmetrical.
The cost of adaptation are immediate and visible.
The benefits are longer term, it's avoided losses, it's greater asset durability, low exposure to future shocks.
But yet these issues are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
Insurance systems are already facing growing pressure in some regions.
Investors are progressively integrating physical climate risk into asset valuation.
In addition to that, another important signal emerging from the barometer concerns value perception.
For the first time this year, stakeholders were asked whether sustainable construction creates more value than conventional construction approaches, considering both economic profitability and overall environmental, social, and heritage value.
Only 47% answered yes.
This is an important signal because it means that confidence in value creation is not yet progressing at the same speed as awareness.
The barometer also sheds light on where skepticism comes from.
Among respondents who would prefer to go backwards on su stable construction, 16% site cost perceived as too high and 16% insufficient guarantees regarding actual performance.
It means that the discussion is also moving from ambition towards proof of performance, proof of resilience, and proof of long term value.
So to help to address this issue, Sanvan the global design firm Arab decided to co develop the dedicated report on adapting buildings to climate change, which has been published earlier this year.
This report addresses a very pragmatic question.
What does climate adaptation actually mean for buildings here and now? Its conclusion are clear.
Adaptation is a challenge of scare.
For example, around 80% of the buildings that will exist in Europe in 2050 are already standing today.
Building face both acute shocks, floods, storms, wild fires, as well as chronic stresses such as rising average temperature and overheating.
Adaptation therefore requires solutions that combines robustness, adaptability and flexibility.
Clearly not a one size fits all approaches.
The report confirms that the building envelope and its immediate surroundings are first lines of defenses.
Finally, the report highlights something essential for this audience.
Adaptation is not only a cost or a risk issue, it's also an investment opportunity.
But it has been already said we need to overcome fragmentation.
Many of the decisions that shape long term resilience are made long before a crisis occurs.
It's planning, procurement, infrastructure design, building standards, and investment priorities.
No single actor can address the transformation alone.
Progress depends on stronger alignment across the value chain from public authorities, finance, developers, manufacturers, architects, insurers, researchers, and communities.
I remain fundamentally optimistic for three simple reasons.
The technical solutions already exist for new buildings as well as for existing ones.
Today is about deploying, not inventing.
Second, buildings are long term assets.
Resilience delivers value over the entire life of a building.
Comfort, health, asset protection, real estate value, and reduced future costs.
And third, our sector has already shown that collective progress is possible when the right frameworks and incentives are in place.
And these approaches need more and more than everything to reflect local realities, climate conditions, available material, and cultural practices.
Because the building is never only a technical object, it has been said it's part of a community.
It's part of a long term social and environmental system.
It shapes how people live, how communities withstand shocks, and how cities remain viable over time.
So I believe that the Giants knows to make this priority part of everyday decision making.
I thank you for all this.
Maxie Emmanuel, thank you very much.
Thank you.
Now, before we move on to our second panel, I would like to invite Mikaela Freiberg Story to join us to share a few words.
Mikaela is the UN resident coordinator in Thailand and she is leading consortium of UN agencies to develop the local finance accelerator.
She's going to be telling us a bit more about how we go from climate risk to project pipeline and also what climate risk actually does to housing and infrastructure.
Mikaela, the floor is yours.
Thank you very much and distinguished speakers, panelists, colleagues and friends.
It's a great honor to be here today and let me start by thanking the government of Azerbijan and you and Habitat for bringing us together here at the Wolf 13.
As I was introduced, I am what they call the United Nations Resident Coordinator in the beautiful Kingdom of Thailand, which means that I lead a UN country team, that is a ecosystem of UN expert agencies, all singing of the same song sheet, the SDGs, to move forward together with Thailand in Thailand, for Thailand to reach the 2030 agenda.
In Thailand, climate risk is already directly affecting housing and urban resilience.
Flooding happens often not only in the capital, the beautiful capital of Bangkok, but also across the country.
Earlier, just a couple of months ago, we had some of the worst flooding for over 300 years in the southern provinces of the country where millions of people were impacted.
The question is not whether climate change affect housing.
The question is how climate change impact financing? Because that is where we need to address the issue.
The pressure has reinforced the importance of strengthening the investment, the planning, and the coordination for a more climate resilience housing and infrastructure.
We are seeing a number of challenges, but I have to say also opportunities in Thailand.
Thailand is an upper middle income country, so concessional financing is, how shall I put it, not very common in that way.
The financing gap for the SDGs runs to trillions of bath every year.
Of course, Thailand is not unique in this.
If it was, the world would be at a different state than what it is with only three years left to reach the 2030 agenda.
But closing the housing and climate infrastructure deficit requires unlocking private capital at scale, and it is there and it is here.
So thank you for this roundtable.
For us as the UN, it doesn't therefore mean that we bring the money.
Those days are not only over if ever they were there, but we are working in a very different way, especially in contexts like Thailand.
Our focus is to really be the convener and the connector, to help bring together government, investors, development partners, and I say this very importantly communities.
Because for us as the UN, it is a very human centered approach that we have when we look at the SDGs and how to move forward.
In Thailand, we work very closely with what we call the UN Global Compact Network, Thailand.
For those of you who are not familiar with the UN Global Compact, I would just like to point out that it is the world's largest platform for corporate sustainability.
If you are here as a private actor and you're not part of the Global Compact, please let me know and I will do everything I can to support you with the context because it is a unique platform for sharing amongst the private sector actors.
In Thailand, the Global Compact is one of the most active and ambitious in the Asia Pacific region.
It is composed of more than 300 companies, many of the largest banks, largest private sectors, largest agricultural companies and many of you may know that agriculture is a key sector for Thailand.
Together, the members have made commitments ranging from about $46 billion to accelerate the SDGs and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 in line with the government ambitions and investing in human capital development for over 1 million people.
The government at the same time, has made sure that regulators have shown foresight by establishing a sustainable investment ecosystem, institutionalizing the one report reflecting ESG, human rights, and emission reductions, while seeking to standardize the green taxonomy, which is fundamental for stability of investment.
At a global level, the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has urged public development banks to use their capital not to fund projects, but to unlock and de risk large scale private investment.
It is the de risking that I think is so important.
Let me therefore take a few words and share with you some of the work we are doing as we are developing a local finance accelerator.
It is a multi level financing mechanism designed to translate territorial priorities into structured investment pipeline and developed under the UN Joint SDG Fund and the Local 2030 coalition for a subnational Financing Solutions Court.
On that note, I would really like to thank the government of Spain and the Basque regional government for hosting and driving this forward in the Bilbao workshop that is coming up in a couple of weeks' time.
I'm sure there will be room and space for private actors to take part in that.
I'm making a little advertisement for the Bilbao event as well, because it will really bring together a number of UN country teams, national and local actors from those countries to really look at how we can invest in housing.
Invest in housing to drive SDGs through a localized platform.
It is focusing on the localization of SDGs, and this is where I think it's so important that we see that the localization of the SDGs is going to be the key for us to succeed on the Agenda 2030.
In Thailand, focusing in on the housing elements, there has been significant demonstration that community led housing is and can be both inclusive yet financially viable.
One institution called the Community Organization for Development Initiative Cody, has supported more than 100,000 households through saving based community housing programs and the National Housing Authority is advancing climate resilience housing approaches.
They do this, of course, in close coordination with the Minister of Social Development and Human Security and our friends and colleagues in UN Habitat.
This is the whole point, making sure that we as the UN come in, we have global experience, global knowledge like we do when it comes to housing with habitat, but we bring the entire UN system.
Whether it is because we know that housing is fundamental for human beings and their well being across all sectors of life.
Unlocking housing means unlocking the SDGs.
For us as the UN, focusing on the housing dimension, we know brings sustainable development to the people.
For me, therefore, being here at the Wolf provides an opportunity to really zoom in on what we can do as the UN because the frameworks are in place.
The political will is evident and what we need is to unlock the financing.
We will bring a lot of the de risking, but we need the sustainable financing for the future.
I thank you for this opportunity, and I hope to see you if not in Bilbao than in Thailand.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
We're going to move on now to our second panel, which, as I mentioned earlier, we're going to be moving from the investment fundamentals to the question of risk, where it sits, who carries it, and what mechanisms actually allow capital to flow into housing at scale.
We want to examine which risk sharing models are working and what investors realistically need from the public sector and international institutions to scale housing finance sustainably.
So let me introduce our panel.
Next to me, we have His Excellency, doctor Misadi Malik, who's the Minister for Climate Change and Environmental coordination in Pakistan.
Thank you for joining us.
We also have messed up my pages.
Here we go.
We also have Alicia Hill, who's the Vice President for Housing Preservation Investments at Federal Capital Partners, a US based real estate investment firm that deploys capital into workforce and affordable housing in markets where mainstream institutional investors are not yet present and Faisal Al Shimay is the Executive Vice President and head of ESG and corporate strategy at Maastrich Bank, one of the Minas region's most active institutions on sustainability linked transactions and Jonathan Williams, who leads the global cities Practice at KPMG, where he works at the Convergence of Advisory.
Finance and urban policy.
Thank you all for joining us and we have as well Christian Lampe.
This is why I messed up my pages, Christian, because I now cannot find a buyout word for you.
But Christian Lema joined us from Germany from GIZ.
They are an investor, and it's a pleasure to have you all here with us.
I want to turn first to His Excellency, doctor Musadiq Malik.
Pakistan contributes less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet it has become one of the most climate exposed countries on earth.
The 2022 floods submerged a third of the country, affected 33 million people, damaged over 2 million homes, and the losses inflicted exceeded $30 billion.
In 2026, the floods returned, and at the fourth Pakistan climate conference, you described climate change as a form of natural terrorism.
Um, and we know that Pakistan's housing and reconstruction needs to run in the tens of billions.
So you've called directly for easier access to climate finance and private investment in climate adaptation, and the country has engaged the IMF's resilience and sustainability facility, worked with the World Bank and ADB on housing reconstruction at scale and met with UN habitat to develop frameworks for climate resilient urban development.
So You're at the front line of climate exposure.
What does Pakistan need from private investors that it is not getting? What instrument, what policy signal would change the investment calculus and is the international finance architecture currently designed to reach the countries that need it the most? The floor is yours.
Thank you.
Well, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you very much.
You've read out my speech.
I really have nothing much to say because you've said it all.
I would just give you an observation and tell you a story.
My observation is I've been in the climate business now for over a year, a year and a half.
Wherever I go, I feel that I'm listening to a tale of two cities and two very diverse cities and sometimes I feel they have nothing to do with each other.
So I feel we're not talking with each other.
We sometimes are talking at each other.
That's something that I would like to bring to the fore today.
I will tell you also a story of a laborer who lived in Karachi, one of the largest cities we have and during the cloudburst, his little shanty home was washed away.
Washed away, do you know what that means? It took him two generations to get out of poverty trap, two generations.
Two generation maybe I'm now just extrapolating probably a generation of homelessness and a generation of struggle, and then a generation of a tin roof shanty somewhere.
It got washed away.
And that was away meant relapsing into poverty.
So it's not just the housing solution, it's also a relapse into much larger issue of poverty.
I haven't even begun to speak about that housing solution where a young kid, a mother has to decide between a child's safety and child's education because a four year or 5-year-old girl cannot walk without pavements about 2.5 to 3 kilometers through the drainage system that doesn't exist during the rainfall to get to the school.
So serious problems.
When we talk about the housing solutions, I often wonder and ask for whom? Are we talking about the housing solutions for lower middle class, middle class, upper middle class? Yeah, I get it.
All of these instruments, everything that you're talking about, we're talking about, I get it.
I don't hear any solution for a person, a family that I've just mentioned.
And your reports tell me that there are 2.8 billion such people, 2.8 billion, 2000 800 million people who have inadequate housing right now in this world.
One would like to see some discussion about those, some discussion about their housing solutions.
I also hear through your presentations and your reports that there are 300 million people who are homeless.
Permanently homeless.
I would also like to have some discussion and here some discussion about those 300 million housing stock solutions.
Where would they come from? I don't quite get that answer.
That's the first part.
The second question is that of justice.
What are these disasters all about? The floods and the likes and the heat capsules and the heat waves and so on and so forth.
Well, we all know they're related to global greenhouse emissions.
We all know that.
Three countries of the world produce about give or take, 30 plus 20, 60, 70% am I counting it wrong? 50.
Now, I'm counting it right.
About 65 to 67% of the world's global emissions are coming from three countries.
The top ten countries account for about 70%.
We are producing 1%, less than 1% and there are numerous countries that are producing less than us.
The value chain is that emissions take place, the temperatures rise, the temperatures rise, the glaciers melt, the glaciers melt, we are hit with floods, seasons change, weather changes, we are hit with heat capsules, were hit with disasters, the cropping patterns change, we have issues of food security, that's the entire value chain.
The case that I'm making is that those who are doing are not suffering and those who are suffering are not doing.
There's an issue of justice here.
I think some of this debate about housing solutions has to be framed in the way of rights and justice.
I think that's also a very important discussion to have.
I can throw some statistics at you.
You've already thrown enough, so I don't need to tell you that in 2022 alone, one third of Pakistan's land surface was under feet of water, one third of total Pakistan surface, one flood.
23 million so far in three or four floods, about 44 million people have been displaced.
I mean, in that flood, there were about give or take 30 million people displaced.
About 2 million homes were devastated or destroyed.
The total damage was roughly give or take 30 billion.
I'm throwing numbers that you.
I stand corrected, but only directionally.
So, only in specificity, not directionally.
So the numbers are exactly where what I'm saying, somewhere in that zone.
6,000 dead, 20,000 injured, 1.8 billion school days lost, 40 million people displaced, and so on and so forth.
So you called it natural terrorism, you threw me off.
You threw me a curveball, so I had to hit it out of the ballpark.
I I don't know what it is, but I find it some kind of terrorism.
I don't know what it is.
I don't know if it's natural, I don't know if it's manmade, but it doesn't work for countries like us.
That's the only thing that I would like to say, guys, it doesn't work for us.
It's not working for us.
Inadvertently, you would be forcing not us because we are responsible.
We committed to doing this for our own children, but many countries would say, we'd burn our coal too.
What the heck? We also have to develop.
We'll deal with it.
We'll first grow, we'll develop, then we'll deal with it, and I'm urging don't do it.
Create a solution set which works for everyone, which is fair, which is rights based.
Which is just, and it's not terribly difficult to do it.
The current architecture doesn't work.
This arithmetic that I've laid out for you, that we grow at three to 4% GDP and then one flood comes and seven to 8% of the GDP is lost, no one is coming and investing in that kind of arithmetic, economic arithmetic.
I don't even call it economics.
We just need to add three to 4% growth, seven to 8% gets destroyed in one devastation, one flood.
It's a math problem.
It's not an economic problem.
We need to begin to add and then, as I've already said, who's doing it? We have a deficit.
You've laid out the deficit.
We have a deficit.
We need about 10 million housing stock.
10 million units is what's currently needed.
About 52 million people are living in shanties.
They don't have formal housing solutions, so there is a big demand.
But the solutions that we are all talking about, they only pertain to less than five to 10% of the population in terms of their income.
You're not talking about the solutions for the people that I'm putting in front of you.
You're talking about the solutions for people who can afford, who have these bankable situation and so on and so forth.
But it's a question that I would like to leave at the table because I don't have any solutions.
I ask people, I ask investors, why don't you come and invest with us? They say, well, sovereign risk, currency risk, political risk, exit risk, da da, da, da, da, risk, risk, risk, risk, risk, no investment.
It's not that you can't have solutions to the risk.
The problem is that there's no way to ascertain this risk and compute it into the solution, absorb it into the solution.
I mean, you talk about the United States.
What is the United States Housing Revolution or the middle class revolution without Fnnie Mae and Freddie Mac? Would someone tell me? There's no housing solution, guys.
It was Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and the low income housing tax credit system, which allowed for this housing revolution to brew.
There was a structure that absorbed the risk.
It calculated the risk, it absorbed the risk and created solutions on top of that where the private sector was willing to come and invest.
So we need similar instruments.
We need instruments that would price risk, absorb risk, and then distribute risk, not talk about risk.
And the discussions that I mostly I encounter, yours are probably the most sophisticated discussions I've heard over the past few, frankly, a year and a half.
But still, we need to come up with those solutions.
So I don't want to just crib and go away.
I think there are solutions.
I think for the devastation that I've just laid out in front of you, the parametric sovereign insurance programs, which are triggered by a certain level of devastation rather than figuring out how much is the damage and what kind of payments need to be made, which takes about six, eight months, sometimes years post devastation while kids are living in rubbles.
So parametric insurance system can work for these kinds of devastations.
There are solutions.
So kind of first and Bangladesh has done that.
Bangladesh has done that for their agriculture.
I'm asking you if it can be done for agriculture, why can't it be done for the housing stock and infrastructure? Similarly, there are first loss guarantee solutions where 20 to 30% of first loss can be absorbed, not in the way of loans, perhaps, maybe in the way of grants because as I said, those who are suffering are not doing, those who are doing may consider grants for that first loss so that the private sector can kick in.
And some of the solutions pertain simply to us and also to technical assistance, whereby if the land is not titled, who is going to give or make investments over untitled land.
So all these 52 million people that I'm talking about who are living in informal housing situations or 2.8 billion as you call them, some land title was afforded to these people to a few square yards of land over which they're living and have been living for 20, 30 years, with some social infrastructure and all of the infrastructure that is needed may create some solution.
So there are solutions, and I'm not a straight housing guy.
If I can come up with these kinds of solutions, I'm pretty sure you can come up with much more nuanced and sophisticated ideas, and I look up to you for those sophisticated ideas, but the ideas on the table are not working.
And, Madam, since you provoked me again, I'll say it again.
Do you know what RS IMF RSF is? Do you know what that is? That's a loan.
That's a loan.
Do you know how much do we spend in servicing our loans? 50% of the total collection, total revenues of Pakistan, over 50% of that we're spending in loans and you're giving us more loans, what is a good number? 70% of all of our revenues should go into loan servicing or 80%? At what point in time would the country collapse under these loans? It's a loan.
The loan requires about 12 reforms and they are fantastic reforms and we committed to them, and we're doing them, but none of them pertain directly to any kind of housing stock solution or housing stock financing or direct climate financing.
The macroeconomic frameworks are essential and I'm so glad that all the people who are supporting all the organizations, multilaterals who are supporting us are encouraging us towards those reforms and we committed to doing it, but is that all enough? The second part is these repurposed loans.
There's some sophisticated word repurposed ODA.
You know what that is? That is money taken away from health and education and sanitation into reconstruction.
We have about, I don't know, 160 some in Human Development Index, you want to take some more money out of health and education, right? Must be a great solution.
Doesn't add up for me.
This idea of green labeling existing loans and repurposing them and repurposing out of human conditions, infant mortality, maternal mortality, child's dropout rates, completion rates, I think is a great idea, not a great idea.
I think blended finance needs a very strong private sector, which don't have.
Idea, and we're discussing that idea.
But juxtapose a developing economy to that idea which doesn't have a very strong private sector.
So I hope we can get some answers.
I propose some, but because my team said just don't go up like always banging against the walls, get some solutions as well.
So here, I had three.
I have laid them out in front of you.
And I would encourage you to give me 30 or one that works.
Because after all, it's a matter of rights and justice and not that just of housing stock.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you very much and thanks for taking up the provocation as well and throwing some back at the table too.
That's all part of dialogue and it's important to have these discussions.
But I wanted to skip the order to bring Alicia in because I think there's some relation here because your company, you deploy capital into markets that most investors are avoiding in context where resilience and long term performance are not optional extras, but baseline requirements.
So With that context, what does a deal that actually closes look like in those markets? What does the term sheet require? What risk sharing structure makes it work? Is there one condition that if missing means you have to walk away? Thank you so much.
First off, I really appreciate the opportunity to be here with such an esteemed group today.
I would say, for FCP, we've been owning and operating multifamily or rental housing for predominantly low and moderate income households in the US for over 25 years.
In that time, having financed over 14.8 billion in terms of housing and really thinking about neighborhoods and communities as a collective, but also as very unique relative to one another.
I would perhaps edit a bit of what you said and say it's less so that we are not going to places that other investors are going, but we are prioritizing the demographic that is of great importance to us and that is in the gap.
I wasn't expecting to hear the low income housing tax credit today, but I'm glad to hear both that and Fannie and Freddie mentioned lot of the work for affordable housing in the US is privately owned.
It's the private sector that owns and operates a great deal of our housing stock, particularly that segment that is for households that we deem to be more low and moderate income, certainly not luxury housing, but more housing for the traditional workforce.
As we think about the interventions to scale housing affordability and access, what we find and I'm hearing this around the table is that there are both complimentary but also competing priorities at all times.
With that in mind, this concept of what makes the deal feasible What really is the value proposition relative to addressing the housing shortage through building new versus preserving the stock that we have.
Increasingly, the age of our housing stock is getting older and is facing very significant deferred maintenance needs, which contributes to the quality of the living experience, particularly for those that are at the lowest end of the income strata.
This idea of you know, what really is required.
I've heard it mentioned many times today.
It's being able to attribute risk appropriately, being able to understand from an investment case perspective, what makes an opportunity viable, particularly because we are a fiduciary, so we execute on behalf of investors and we execute through investment funds.
And so as I hear the conversations around the table, I do think it's important to reemphasize this idea that really addressing the need of housing affordability for us is just good business.
Part of it is an element of social good and we care a lot about that.
We certainly recognize that with a lack of housing access and affordability that increasingly has undue economic strain and burden on the constituents in our communities, which has ancillary impacts in terms of how they can participate, how they access opportunity, and then ultimately how they contribute to society over time.
But we do believe that there is a significant investable opportunity.
And the way that we think about that is we really try to understand, what is the risk? What is the opportunity? We have that all contextualized around the mission imperative.
That's very important to us as well.
So we start off by, I heard this earlier, housing for whom, being able to determine what level of housing affordability and for what demographic is the priority for the business at hand.
We need housing in all areas of the spectrum.
I would agree with many of the folks here that in particular, as you go further down the income curve, being able to address that with traditional financing alone and traditional equity investment alone is extremely challenging and so we have been able to leverage certain tools such as the low income housing tax credit and other types of solutions through public private partnerships, but it is quite fragmented to do that work.
We're seeing that work being done in individual localities down at the local level.
It's not just at the state level, it's going down to county or even community level to make those work.
I would say in terms of being able to really consider what is in the term sheet.
Well, first and foremost, when we think about, you can measure and you can assess risk if you can identify it and if there is an established framework that you can get comfortable with.
Oftentimes, that may require instances of having very specific due diligence criteria that we are focused on.
We invest across the United States.
There are some areas where climate risk is a very significant and serious concern, but there's also a significant housing need and affordability challenge in those places and we believe that those places are worthy of investment.
That does mean that our investment process and our execution requires an evaluation and assessment of that risk and relying on those frameworks.
We also look at specifically If we are trying to solve for a very specific demographic, we talk about it in the context of area median income relative to a place, part of that process is having a very clear alignment around who are we solving for? What are our priorities and what in our business plan and our actual operations is going to either mitigate the concerns that we have or is going to provide an opportunity for us to improve, enhance, or otherwise advance the work.
Then ultimately, what does that translate to in terms of performance? What we have been pleased to see and just looking at the data that's been made available overlook in the past 25 year period, is that specifically as it relates to affordable housing in the United States, the business imperative and investment case is quite strong.
We are seeing that over a long term horizon, the fact that we are short anywhere 4000000-7 million units and that range is really based on closer to 7 million for those that are very extremely low income, and then that gets smaller and gets closer to three, 4 million as you get a little bit higher up the income curve, but still very much below median income, what we're seeing is that there is such significant demand that the performance is actually quite stable.
That is the case that we really to our investor community is that this is a stable, long term, resilient part of the market and that if we are deploying business plans that enable us to be thoughtful around how we're going to preserve the physical asset, how we're going to identify the risks that are available, and how are we going to leverage some of these other tools going forward? Those are the manners in which we try to make that assessment and that does show up when you talk about what's in the term sheet.
We're really thinking about contingencies, we're thinking about due diligence and we're thinking about whether or not this addresses the demographic that we are trying to solve for and fits within our very specific investment parameters at any time.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Faisal, can I turn to you next? Because you have argued publicly that sustainable finance must be human centric, that limiting to these green metrics alone is not the way forward.
Now, Masrak has been amongst the most active banks in the region on sustainable finance.
And we know that the commercial bank sits between policy and the developer on most housing transactions.
So the question is this, as long as affordable housing cannot be classified as qualifying asset under existing ESG frameworks, does it matter how well designed the policy environment is or how sophisticated the blended finance instruments are, or even how willing the governments are to share that risk? Well, thank you first for hosting me.
Two, when we speak about human centricity and we address sustainability in the broader definition, we need to address humans as the pillar of prosperity and enabling prosperity for generations to come.
When we look at the SDGs, we cannot take them one by one in a silo approach.
For example, when we address SDG 11, we cannot ignore the housing affordability crisis.
We need to look at SDG 111, and ten, and eight.
No poverty, reduced inequalities, and decent work and economic growth with sustainable cities.
Furthermore, as a banker, I wish I can give more, but we are not charity.
We need to work in a roundtable equally with the government, redefining the public private sector partnership.
I cannot take a risky decision that can jeopardize the benefits or the profitability of the stakeholder.
I will lose my job.
In addition, we need to be pragmatic about this.
If we look at the National Housing Program in the United Arab Emits, I'm taking it as an example.
We have multiple banks engaging with the government sector, operating as banks and financial institution, providing the financial instrument needed.
But at the same time, the government waive the IBR.
It is a sovereign decision.
As a bank, I cannot tell the government waive the IBR.
The central bank with the Ministry of Finance, who set the target on the central bank needs to take that decision.
By doing so, we are making the sustainable finance more affordable.
In addition, the government in the UAE waived the VAT taxes on the first house, making it more affordable.
Tax waiving, BOR reduction or waiving in this case, and then more incentives to make it more affordable will de risk the sustainable finance.
In addition, if we will look at the sustainable finance taxonomy or ESG taxonomy available today, Except India, I believe, everyone else is making it green.
Let's call it by the name.
I would say this is social fraud and ESG fraud.
It's a strong statement, but we call it ESG taxonomy.
It's not, it's pure green.
Either we cry out loud because some snow is melting in a ski resort while people are dying because of hunger or staying homeless in another country or continent is not a matter a bank can address.
It's government, international organization, and private sector can address accumulatively.
When we take this forward, I would highly recommend redefining ESG taxonomy, integrating the SDGs in it, and at the same time, have an open dialogue with the government stating that what can be done to de risk the sustainable finance and specifically housing.
Today, we have a green mortgage in Michel.
Does it address everyone's interests? Does it make housing affordable? Yes and no.
It's a green asset that I can put in my books, but I'm trying my best with the team to make it more appealing to customers to take or consider.
We have an open dialogue with the real estate developer that guys, by increasing the efficiency of the building, by installing smart building management system, by using sustainable energy, by water circularity and segregating greywater from blackwater and using the greywater for irrigation and afforestation activities around the community, we are doing our best.
But is it enough? No.
We need to sit with the government, climate change, Ministry of Finance, Central Bank, and the other key stakeholder.
To de risk and amplify the value of the money.
When we talk about money, we are not talking about small amounts of money, we are talking about trillions of available funding today that can be allocated for sustainable finance and affordable housing.
If we look at the global sustainability finance, it's scaled dramatically over the last five years.
Cumulative labeled sustainable bond issuance reached approximately 6.1 trillion on March 2025, up from roughly 1 trillion 2022.
The growth is about 510%.
So when we look at money, money is available.
Five banks among 79 financial institutions in UAE during cop 28, committed to invest 1 trillion, five out of 79.
I'm taking the UA as an example because politically, I shouldn't point fingers at other countries, but how many banks in other countries committed on sustainable finance? In India, for example, in Gift City, it's a regulatory mandate, 5% must be sustainable finance of your books as a bank, 5%, and this is the minimum and this is required disclosures.
Of course, this will raise the flag around potential, I don't want to call it a greenwashing because again, it's a green.
ESG washing is possible and the potential risk of committing this is amplified because it's a regulatory requirement.
The regulations there is evolving very quickly.
In other countries, this should be the game.
My recommendation here is, let's sit on a round table and redefine ESG taxonomy because today it's not ESG.
Again, it's a green.
And let's prioritize.
Do we need to have a nice forest and we need to keep the two degrees at stake or should we look at world hunger and homeless people putting the priority on human centricity again? In the fifth Industrial Revolution, it's a pillar.
It should be our pillar everywhere.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Next, Christian, bringing you into the conversation and allow me to have 3 seconds of redemption to properly introduce you this time.
Christian Lempe serves as the Director of Global Policy, governance, and Cities Division at Germany's Principal International Development Cooperation agency and one of the largest bilateral donors working on urban development, municipal finance, and climate resilient infrastructure globally.
Christian, thank you for joining us.
Now, Germany has been integrated climate conditionality and resilience requirements into its development finance instruments and Based on your experience, I wanted to ask you, is climate resilience functioning as a genuine de risking mechanism that attracts private capital into African housing, for example, an urban infrastructure, or does it still add cost and complexity that makes deals hard to close? What is your experience? Yeah.
Thank you very much for the question and also thanks for being here.
I think we're a little bit odd.
I'm the odd man here in this group because we're not a developer or a finance institution, we are development agency and I thank for your understanding, but I think I will deviate a little bit from your question because I feel the personal need to react to what His Excellency has said.
That was quite an inspiring intervention and I In the end, GIZ, the organization that I'm working for now for 20 years and I worked in different contexts such as the DRC, Sierra Leone, I was in Ghana and other countries.
All countries where definitely a huge portion of these 2000 300 million people that don't enjoy adequate housing are situated and where they are suffering every day.
I think what you are telling us and the I need to agree with that.
What you're telling us, the solution to that cannot be more debt and the solution cannot be less investment in human development.
If we are going that path, these two ways are blocked.
I think I can only agree with that.
You suggested some solutions.
I think that maybe touches a little bit closer to your question.
We have some experience how that can work.
So there is good news, that it's not possible.
We're not in the business of the middle class, we're not in the business of big shiny housing investments.
Our business is really what you are talking about, and making sure that there's also investment and funding for these people available.
And I can only echo what our colleague who left from the UN has said, Mikaela, that probably the availability of finance is not so much the problem, that's at least not our experience.
What we were experiencing is and that's maybe my key message that the availability of bankable financeable project is the problem.
We don't have the projects that are able to be invested in.
That is something that we are focusing on.
We are implementing a couple of project preparation funds such as the City climate Finance gap Fund, the C 40 Finance facility.
And there we have unlocked with a very meager public investment, we have unlocked 2.5 billion of US dollars of investments in these housing, so that's possible, and part of that has been private funding, private capital, but also grants, which might be an important part of what you are talking about because it doesn't mean that grants is part of the justice problem that you were addressing.
That's also our responsibility with grants to address it.
So but even for that to provide grants and organizations such as the World Bank, they need projects to provide the grants for.
And these projects, most of the time are not available, particularly not in those contexts.
And at the GAP fund, we have analyzed over 200 expressions of interest for these, and we are now helping 35 cities in that regard.
And in the city's finance facility in the CFF that we're implementing with CC 40 initiative.
Um, we have helped 43 large infrastructure projects to move towards financing.
So it's possible we can do it.
It's a technical problem.
We're talking about technical assistance, and so that's definitely there.
So that's maybe the first message.
It's project preparation.
The second message is, of course, that we must look at housing not as an isolated sector.
We were talking about fragmentation.
I think that goes without saying because of time, I don't want to go deeper into that.
I think we need an ecosystems approach in these projects, integrating energy, water, drainage and have it.
That's I think understood.
We're doing that, for example, in the Comsar that's focusing on Africa.
That's an initiative we are implementing together with the European Union.
Um, and the third, and that's maybe most at the core of what we are doing.
The core business of GSS, if you have to sum it up in one sentence is to strengthen the capacities of local governments to deliver public services for their citizens.
That's what we're doing.
We're strengthening them, empowering them so they can deliver on their own promises.
That's what our business normally is.
And that's also one bottleneck that we see is the link between the cities and the national level.
So we have a huge fragmentation.
Many of the decisions that are taken at the national level affect the cities, but they are not involved.
They cannot input them.
So that's also a question of governance to unlock this capital so they can act.
And that's something that we do Maybe I close with that and I would be very happy Excellency if the suggestion that we don't have the time today, but I would really love if somehow we find that maybe I can contact your colleagues or something, then we can build on their proposals that you have made and maybe further develop them because I think it's exactly what we need.
That's my focus really and Get's focus to see what ideas do we have to deliver for these 3.3 billion people that don't enjoy adequate housing.
That's something that the effort should go into and that's the focus that we should have.
I totally agree with you.
Thank you for making that point.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I just want to take a short step aside from the panel because, of course, as you will have noticed, we're very glad that Anna Claudia Rosbck, the Executive Director of UN Habitat, has joined us here on the table.
Anna Claude so nice to see you again.
We last saw each other at MPM in March, the great real estate investment fair where the world gathers and It was really there that you put this impetus and this message on the importance of partnerships and bringing in the private sector and the need to work together and find these new instruments.
It's been great to see that we're bringing this conversation on housing finance to be risking also to the World Urban Forum, which traditionally was not the place for it, but from this to the Business and Innovation Hub, it's been great to see it happen.
I wanted to ask you, what is your message for the private sector actors that are here not just around the table, but in the room too.
Thank you so much, Carlotta.
Your Excellency, doctor Malik, Minister of Climate Change and Environmental Coordination of Pakistan.
It's a pleasure to see you again.
We already had very fruitful conversation about these topics as well and all the panelists here and new partners, we have established a new advisory group with the private sector.
Since I've attended my first wolf in Cairo and after I took the position, I realized that We needed to strengthen the conversation with the private sector and Wolf for me is a strong robust mechanism to do that because we are all together somehow.
Specifically about finance, this has been the big issue and challenge that has been presented to me to us.
As an example, we concluded the African Housing Forum a couple, I think two months ago or something, or even less, and the big elephant in the room was finance.
However, we also found out in the same housing forum that some countries like Kenya, they have been able to leverage domestic finance to deal with the housing issues and the numbers are not small.
The president spoke on the opening about, I think four to $5 billion, money that he wouldn't be able to leverage anywhere, not with development banks, not with the climate funds, not with this short period of time because these operations they take also a long time.
And he also said in the opening, and I think it's true for many regions.
The resources aren't there.
I mean, there are some budget despite fiscal constraints and everything, there is some fiscal budgetary capacity within the governments.
There is untapped capacity in terms of taxation in many countries and land based finance is one source that's absolutely untapped in many, many countries, starting with property tax, we still have countries that don't charge property taxes.
Um, and the other aspect is, we do have savings.
So people have savings, their pension funds and so on.
So savings and reserves from the banks.
So if you look at the banks, if you look at the funds, so there is money, but this money is not flowing to development and this money is not flowing to housing to urban infrastructure to housing, right? If you look at the international, uh, portfolio.
We just had a very successful roundtable with the IFIs.
I believe it was successful at the vice president of the World Bank with us, other high level officials from many development banks from Latin America, Asia, Asia and Europe and the discussion was about, there is room to expand their urban portfolio.
Climate, the same thing.
We have been expanding our portfolio within your habitat, within the vertical funds.
I believe there is room to expand more We had a nice discussion about the intersection of Urban and climate Minister and we are doing that here.
We did that at COP in Blaine.
We are planning to do that again in Antalia.
I believe this whole advocacy and the whole research that we have been doing, the report that was launched here, this forum, 80% of the 3.0 NDC generation recognizes the importance of urban to deal with climate.
A large part of them recognize housing as a part.
In doing that, for the first time, we're going to have an IPCC IPC reports focused on cities.
In doing that, improving the data, the evidence, the knowledge, in the advocacy, we have built this narrative and we are able to expand on this front.
But bottom line is this money is not coming there.
I think there are It's not about only bankable projects.
This is one bottleneck.
There are major international finance forces that end up moving the capital flows to other places.
That's that.
But of course, we need bankable projects I'm not saying we don't need, but I wouldn't put the bottleneck on bankable projects.
I mean, there are major forces bringing the capital flow somewhere else.
What we need to do is to work together to see how we can take this massive capital that is available domestically, internationally, and shift into development, shift into housing.
Working with the IFIs, working with governments, bringing housing to the center of development, which we think we are advancing the Ka is one case, but many other countries, many ministers I spoke during this forum, they, they are bringing housing.
As part of the national development agenda.
This is an important task for us all to do, including the private sector to do this task.
Then of course, if cities are not well planned, then the investments, the projects, they will land in an environment that's not sustainable and these projects will fail.
So even if we have bankable projects, if the enabling environment is not there, how can we have a bankable project for a bridge that's not inserted in a comprehensive urban planning that connects the A to B metropolitan area, the urban systems, the communities, and so on, so we have to consider the urban planning, the city as part of the safeguards when defining projects because we have developed standards for social and climate safeguards, but we haven't developed safeguards for urban.
So when a mortgage company, I think we had this discussion in Canada when I was there, when a bank is providing a mortgage or capital for the real estate developers to build something, why not look at the, the urban standards, for example, right? So I think there are many aspects that we have to address in relation to finance and connecting finance to the end user that goes much beyond the bankability of the projects.
It has to do with building this environment, with understanding that the projects needs should be within systems that connect people that respect the nature and so on.
It has to do with this major capital flows and at the national level, leveraging what is there to housing.
I have one example that I lived in my professional life that was mind blowing.
At a certain point, investing in Islams in Brazil, where I come from, was not possible because they are usually occupy areas that are not considered formal.
Legal, et cetera.
The water utility wouldn't connect, electricity wouldn't connect.
But after the approval of national law that recognized that earmart areas could be forcing as special development zones, and this was accepted by the legal bodies of the national government and the president at that time, Lula negotiated with the IMF to recognize these investments as investments and not social expenditures.
This opened the tap from day to night because in the moment you recognize that as investments.
In the moment you have a zoning systems that enable you to connect the services, the tap of the money flow.
Just to give an example of how we need to work together around the systems and I hope For the next, we can keep working together through the wolf and for the next wolf Carlotta, I hope that this table is full.
I'm committed also to Fibs, to keep going to Ming to meet you in your place so that we learn how to work with each other.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I'm sure everyone in this table, myself included, will take you on the challenge of continue to meet out there in the world and continue these discussions.
Thank you so much, Ana Claudia.
I want to turn back to our panel because we still have a few topics that we want to get to and Jonathan has been so patient at the very end of the table, far away, but we haven't forgotten about you, Jonathan, because it's quite an interesting point because it brings so many of these themes and threads we've picked upon during the discussion.
You work sits precisely at that intersection of advisory, finance, and urban policy.
Advising both governments, structuring housing pipelines and the investors who are deciding whether or not to enter.
From that vantage point, at what point does a housing project become unbankable? How is physical climate risk already entering the underwriting and long term performance metrics? I guess where are the structured finance approaches that are genuinely closing the deals rather than just being points of discussion? Thank you so much.
Carlotta, thank you very much and I think the nature of this conversation has changed in such a wonderful way through the course of all of the inputs.
Perhaps I could just take one small step back.
I've really reflected on, as I've enjoyed with 13 over the course of the last few days, this dilemma that exists between affordability and bank ability.
And it's one that I feel quite passionate about.
I guess where I've got to with all of that is that I think housing serves two currently incompatible masters at the same time.
As shelter, it needs to be affordable, priced relative to incomes, not capital markets.
But as an asset and we've heard that thoroughly during the course of this debate, it needs to deliver risk adjusted returns, which means pricing it relative to capital markets and not incomes.
What I'm left with, I suspect is minimum investable thresholds and the maximum affordable thresholds are not the same number.
And the gap between them is where I think housing policy ought to live, does live, and perhaps is oftentime failing.
I was involved in an incredibly interesting conversation yesterday with the World Bank as they launched their report or will launch their report, very excited for when it comes out, Sub Saharan Africa's urban awakening.
Where I was talking, Keisa on issues around cost of capital, where we were talking about micro data and the impact that's having around investors defaulting to country risk because they can't measure what they can't see household incomes, utility consumption, et cetera.
I was challenged in that meeting in a really provocative way and we've had that today, which has been so exciting.
What bank ability means I would share should be different in different regions.
Presenting African city investment opportunities by referencing Western benchmarks immediately positions Africa as deficient.
The narrative could be replaced by Africa's conditions are different and differentiation creates differentiated opportunity.
Core to that element perhaps is a focus on urban velocity, demographic dividend, and what we've just heard in terms of domestic capital underutilized, particularly things around savings and pension funds.
I'll pick up on his Excellent point as well.
Africa has about 60 to 70% debt to GDP ratio across the continent.
South Africa for every one round it spends on sports, arts and culture.
It spends about 27 rounds paying off debt and the country's credit card.
If the fundamentals are different, the application of standard Western benchmarks become really difficult to apply.
However, the question asks very explicitly around the criteria for housing projects and unbankability.
We appreciate today the conversation that's been levied around the standard investor consideration, debt service coverage, project returns that are insufficient to clear hurdle rates, cost overruns, all of those matters that sit deeply at the heart of stability, predictability, reliability, But unbankability is a compounding of location risk, institutional risk, demand risk, finance structure risk, political risk.
His Excellency spoke about risk, risk risk, and I couldn't agree more.
My reflection would be that within that sits examples of how you can respond.
If you haven't been to the expo and you haven't seen the South Africa stand, please give it a visit.
They've launched a return of what used to be FLSP into first home finance.
It's an incredibly well architecture demand side subsidy.
It identifies the gap market problem.
It uses the DFI appropriately as an intermediary, and it leverages public capital against private lending in a fiscally defensible ratio.
Its core logic is one that is targeted income graduating subsidy can genuinely move households across the bank ability threshold.
It's sound, and it's increasingly validated by international housing finance practice.
Coming on very quickly and I'll try to move at a bit of pace to the back end.
This point around planning failure or finance failure.
I guess before I start, I think there's a series of others that are really critically important through experience that are good to air here where we talk about execution capacity failure, we can talk about force majeure cascades.
We can talk about and have heard a little about reputational or ESG finance failures.
Insurance failures.
We've heard some of that during the course of this debate too.
I think if I were to be really clear relating to planning and or finance failures, I think it's both and I think it's compounded.
Planning and finance failures are independent of each other.
A planning failure creates a finance failure, and a finance failure makes planning irrelevant.
Sequencing is important too in this conversation.
Planning failures typically precede finance failures, but finance failures can expose planning assumptions that weren't really stress tested to the appropriate level.
I think in my experience and certainly our experience as KPMG globally, planning failures that tip projects into unbankability typically revolve around failures in approving sites with bulk infrastructure.
The absence of integrated spatial frameworks.
I think finance failures, and again, through experience, equity contributions that assume grant funding that doesn't eventually materialize.
And construction loans that expire before planning conditions are actually completely discharged.
I won't speak to the insurance pieces.
I think we've heard them well.
What I did want to just very quickly mention was a bit around structured finance approaches that are actually closing deals.
Again, His Excellency spoke about the first lost credit enhancement structures.
I won't speak to them.
I will speak to guarantees.
I think the Green guarantee company founded in 2024, I think is the first solely climate focused financial guarantor and specializes in backing hard currency green debt instruments in ODT eligible countries.
It's a new instrument, and I think it is absolutely directly relevant to housing and particularly in Southern Africa.
I think we see a lot of partial credit guarantees from MDBs, and they are, I think, through experience, the instruments that are most frequently deployed.
What's being discussed but not closing at scale.
Interesting.
Again, his excellent spoke about parametric insurance integrated into our project structures.
I think we see it in agriculture and sovereign risk transfers.
What we don't see it yet with any maturity is standardized across housing.
Resilience bonds.
We're not seeing enough of it in terms of linked to avoidable disaster cost savings.
Then the point around tokenization of affordable housing, I think is another one that's being discussed, incredibly exciting potentially, but we haven't yet seen materialize.
With that, I'll pass back to you Coletta.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Jonathan.
Thank you.
And I've been told that the room needs to be reset for the next discussion because if it was up to me, we would continue.
I think it was so beautiful to see how the discussion takes its own shape and really highlighting what are the issues that are on top of mind and really shows the importance of having forums as this and these discussions here at Wolf and building on what the executive director said.
I hope that next time around, we continue to have this and have even a bigger table and more time to discuss.
But thank you everyone for joining us and do visit the Business and Innovation Hub where a lot of yourselves and some of the partners and these discussions are sure to continue.
Thank you very much for your time.
Thank you.