On 22–23 October 2025, AidEx and the Humanitarian Finance Forum, with support from the HIFHUB, convened the Innovative Finance Conference in Geneva. The two-day programme brought together more than 300 participants from 154 organisations across the humanitarian, donor, and investment communities.
Setting the tone
On the first day, Anne-Sofie Munk, Director of the HIFHUB, served as Master of Ceremonies for an afternoon that brought together voices from across the humanitarian, finance, and academic worlds. Each session worked through a wide arc from organisational readiness inside humanitarian agencies through to investor perspectives on funding humanitarian solutions at scale.
On the panel: pre-arranged and blended finance
Peter Klansø, Senior Advisor at the HIFHUB, joined the panel From Crisis to Resilience – Pre-arranged and Blended Finance as Catalysts for Sustainable Solutions, moderated by Colin Bruce (ICRC), alongside the Syrian Development Organisation, EBRD’s Ukraine Hub, and African Risk Capacity. The discussion noted that only around 1% of crisis financing was pre-arranged in 2022, despite the predictability of many shocks — and that scaling these approaches depends less on technical design than on shifting mindsets around risk across the humanitarian, public and private sectors.
Facilitating the case studies
Anne-Sofie facilitated the case study segment Parametric Heat Insurance for Urban Resilience, featuring the Women’s Climate Shock Insurance and Livelihoods Initiative co-designed by Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) Swiss Re, ICICI Lombard, and Climate Resilience for All. When temperatures crossed the trigger threshold in 2024, payouts reached roughly 46,000 informal women workers in India, and enrolment subsequently scaled from around 50,000 to more than 200,000.
Read the Executive Summary and Case Studies Recap.
