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Social Finance in Pakistan

Pakistan is home to a growing movement to advance outcome-based finance (OBF), bringing together catalytic capital, cross sector partnerships and a sharper focus on measurable results. In a context where development challenges are complex and resources are often constrained, OBF offers a powerful way to align funding with outcomes, ensuring capital is directed towards interventions that deliver meaningful and lasting impact.

As a market builder, we are committed to growing the wider ecosystem for OBF in Pakistan by sharing global and regional learnings, building awareness, supporting partner capacity and helping stakeholders understand how innovative finance can be designed and implemented in practical, locally relevant ways. 

The problem 

Pakistan is facing a convergence of economic pressures, including fiscal constraints, shrinking global aid flows and rising social needs, all of which have stretched public funding and traditional aid structures. Impact investment in the country remains nascent, with limited strategic deployment of corporate social responsibility funding, while economic volatility, foreign exchange instability and weak delivery systems within government have historically deterred foreign private capital participation.

 At the same time, local capital markets, large domestic banks and development finance institutions hold the liquidity and infrastructure needed to support social outcomes but have not yet been engaged at scale.

Our solution  

Social finance offers a way to crowd in private capital, providing upfront investment that can improve efficiency, deliver better value for money and strengthen accountability in public programmes. Our OBF programmes are designed to mobilise local private sector resources first, establishing credibility and a proof of concept that can later attract larger pools of domestic and international capital.

 By aligning public sector goals with private capital through blended finance, we help government, private sector, philanthropic and civil society partners apply innovative financing approaches to Pakistan's most pressing development priorities, including education, skills and workforce development, and mental health. We support government partners to embed OBF within public financial management, contracting and service delivery systems, shifting the emphasis from funding activities to achieving outcomes and unlocking new sources of capital for development built around results and impact.

Our programme 

By aligning public sector goals with private capital through blended finance, our programmes tackle both the funding gap and the need for stronger accountability in service delivery. The OBF structure also brings in value for each key player: 

Value for government: Access to upfront capital without immediate budgetary expenditure, improved value for money through results-based payments, and stronger performance accountability. The model provides a replicable proof of concept, showing how blended finance can align public priorities with private capital while building credible evidence to attract local and international funding for social outcomes across sectors.

Value for Funders: Funding is linked directly to verified results, ensuring measurable impact, accountability, and better value for money. Funders play a catalytic role in this first-of-its-kind programme by demonstrating the effectiveness of paying for results, strengthening systems for data-driven delivery, and building market and government readiness for scaling outcomes-based financing across sectors.

Value for private sector: An opportunity to invest in measurable social impact with sovereign de-risking, strengthening investor confidence, enabling private capital participation in larger blended finance opportunities for social programmes, and contributing to the creation of a new asset class in Pakistan’s capital market. 

Key projects