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From Conversation to Capital: SFi Deepens Its Capital Mobilisation Efforts
- Jun 11
- 4 min read
Looking for partners to co-design thematic vehicles with accessible, pooled structure to deploy impact capital across Asia Pacific
We have spent the past twelve months listening across working groups, closed-door roundtables, and field-building dialogues — on ocean finance, social innovation, nature-based solutions, and emerging market fund development — and witnessed a consistent signal emerging. There continues to be a real appetite amongst our community to deploy impact capital in Asia Pacific (APAC), but there are real structural barriers standing in the way of this goodwill.
We designed SFi Capital Mobilisation Initiative to address this by bringing together like-minded partners to co-design the right infrastructure, co-create the appropriate vehicle, and collaborate to efficiently mobilise impact capital.
What We Heard
The conversations that shaped this initiative were candid, and sometimes uncomfortable. Family office principals told us that impact funds they genuinely believed in sat outside their reach — minimum tickets too large, due diligence too resource-intensive, peer conviction too thin to act alone. Aggregation, they made clear, is not a convenience for this cohort. It is a prerequisite. Here are a few examples:
Practitioners working on ocean finance flagged Hong Kong’s underleveraged position as a maritime hub — and the absence of the blended structures needed to attract private capital alongside concessional finance.
Nature-based solutions advocates described the urgent need for local proof-of-concept capital to generate the credible data that institutional investors require before they can enter.
Social purpose organisations across the region are systematically undercapitalised at the organisational level — not because of a failure of mission, but because the infrastructure funding that would allow them to absorb and deploy impact capital has never been prioritised.
And across all of these conversations, one theme surfaced again and again: the traditional toolkit is no longer fit for purpose. Recoverable grants, revenue-based financing, blended facilities, evergreen funds — the structures that the moment demands require us to move beyond the mainstream. The time is now to co-create solutions and the right infrastructure to harness private capital for the thematic areas in focus.
Five Areas of Opportunity
We have identified five early-stage thesis areas where we see compelling need, nascent deal flow, and a structural gap that intentional capital can address:
Biodiversity and Nature-Based Solutions in Hong Kong — Technical assistance and blended finance models to enable local pilots in forestry and marine protection, establishing proof-of-concept for scalable NbS investment across the region.
Asian Fund Managers with Impact Strategies — A catalytic facility to support emerging Asian fund managers building impact-focused strategies, addressing the gaps in first-loss capital, operational support, and anchor investor access that disproportionately constrain this cohort.
Social Innovation and Outcomes-Based Financing — Structures that enable outcomes-based contracts and social impact bonds to scale in the APAC context, starting in Hong Kong — bridging government, civil society, and private capital in a framework built for this region.
Capacity Building for Social Purpose Organisations — A dedicated facility to fund the organisational infrastructure of social purpose organisations, addressing the persistent underfunding of the capabilities — data, governance, talent, systems — that limits their ability to absorb impact capital effectively.
Blue Economy — Investment in sustainable ocean and marine economies across APAC: maritime decarbonisation, green shipping, sustainable aquaculture, coastal resilience, and marine conservation, anchored in Hong Kong’s unique position at the intersection of maritime commerce and international finance.
A Modular, Field-Building Approach
The SFi Capital Mobilisation Initiative is not a single fund — it is a set of thematic capital mobilisation vehicles — each designed as an accessible, pooled structure, and each calibrated to the specific intervention logic its area demands.
The initiative will take shape across three complementary activities running in parallel.
A curated thematic event series — salons, roundtables, and field visits — will curate deal flow and build the investor relationships that underpin credible vehicles.
Co-design working groups, convened for each opportunity area, will bring together investors, technical experts, field practitioners, and potential anchor partners with a mandate to stress-test the thesis, define appropriate structures and governance, and reach go/no-go recommendations within a defined timeframe.
Where working groups reach conviction, SFi will move to formal vehicle or platform launch — whether a blended finance facility, a pooled SPV, a capacity building fund, or another structure appropriate to the opportunity.
An Invitation to Co-Design
We are building this initiative in public because we believe co-design — not consultation — is how these vehicles will succeed. We are not arriving with a finished proposal. We are arriving with a conviction, a set of questions, and an open table.
We are looking for partners willing to shape the structure, governance, and deployment logic of these vehicles alongside us. Anchor funders interested in seeding the development process. Investors, technical experts, and delivery partners who can add rigour, network, and shared accountability to what we build.
We're pleased to share that four organisations have already stepped forward: Innovation Finance Initiative, The Social Investment Consultancy, ADM Capital Foundation, and The SEWIT Consultancy — a member of Nan Fung Group. Each brings something distinct to this table, and together they reflect the cross-sector depth this initiative demands. The table is not yet full. If your organisation is aligned in purpose and ready to co-create, we would welcome the conversation.
The SFi Impact Summit on 3 June 2026 marked the public signal that this process has begun. If you are ready to move from conversation to capital, we want to hear from you.
