Data as Market Infrastructure:

Emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) face a persistent gap between perceived and actual investment risk, a gap that drives up the cost of financing and holds back capital flows that these markets need. Closing this gap requires better data: verified, project-level evidence on default, recovery, and return that investors, creditrating agencies, and regulators can act on. Several initiatives are now working to buildthis evidence base, including EMInvest, the EMInvest Performance Database, alongside complementary efforts such as GEMs and the Financing Africa Forward Risk-Return Data Hub.

This roundtable aims to bring together governments, financial institutions, credit rating agencies, and regulators to take stock of this progress and to demonstrate that these initiatives are coordinated rather than duplicative. The discussion will surface early learnings on where private investment performance data adds value across three levels of the system: at transaction level, sharper pricing and a supplement to sovereign risk proxies; at strategic level, a stronger evidence base for internal and client conviction on EMDE allocation; and at market level, an input into rating methodologies and regulatory engagement on EMDE asset risk weightings. It will also highlight concrete progress fromthe ongoing data initiatives, including EMInvest, GEMs and Financing Africa Forward Risk-Return Data Hub. This is intended to move interest toward engagement: building the willingness of international and EMDE commercial investors to contribute data overtime, and giving regulators and rating agencies a clearer sense of how they might eventually draw on it, so that the different parts of the data ecosystem move forward together.

Guiding Questions

• What do commercial investors (banks, asset managers) need from an information and data perspective to support their engagement in EMDE markets?
• How can data support rating agencies and regulators in prudential capital regulation?
• What data initiatives are already seeking to meet these needs, and how can investors help take this further?
• How does this agenda link to existing international processes and recommendations?
• What are the key design considerations for EMInvest that will support maximum investor engagement and data contribution?