A new Asian Development Bank-led comparison of 15 multilateral lenders puts their combined development assets at nearly $1.5 trillion at the end of 2025, backed by $163 billion in paid-in shareholder capital. It finds that their financial positions remained stable from 2023 to 2025, with substantial capital and liquidity buffers despite pressure on developing economies.
The Multilateral Development Banks’ Comparison Report 2026 was published on 14 October by the Global Risk and Finance Forum, chaired this year by the Asian Development Bank. ADB and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development coordinated the study. It compares capital, liquidity, risk and credit ratings across institutions including the African Development Bank, the European Investment Bank and the World Bank’s lending arms.
Liquidity and credit quality
The report says participating banks’ liquidity buffers covered short- to medium-term debt 2.6 times over. Most also kept non-performing loan ratios below 2%, while most held triple-A credit ratings. These are findings across a varied group of institutions, not a guarantee that every bank has the same financial position or can absorb every shock.
Development assets in the comparison include loans, equity investments and guarantees. The report’s headline ratio of more than $9 in such assets for every $1 of paid-in capital describes the combined figures; it should not be read as a simple measure of how much cash is available to lend. The institutions also use other sources of funding and risk-management tools, and their mandates and balance sheets differ.
The 2026 edition adds a three-year view of selected indicators, rather than relying only on a single year-end snapshot. It says positions were stable from 2023 through 2025, a period in which higher energy prices and supply-chain disruptions put pressure on many developing economies. The figures are mainly based on 2025 year-end data, the most recent available across institutions. Reporting periods were aligned where possible, but the report notes some variation between banks.
Comparisons need context
The report cautions that capital adequacy interacts with other features of a bank’s business and cannot be judged in isolation. A single measure at one point in time cannot show the full trend or expected business performance. Its expanded trend analysis is intended to make the information more useful to shareholders and G20 members, not to create a league table that ranks the institutions on one ratio.
The comparison also records continued use of exposure-exchange agreements, which allow banks to share or exchange parts of their portfolios and manage concentration risks. One example cited is a $3 billion agreement signed by ADB and the World Bank in October 2025. That deal predates this report and is included as context on risk-sharing, rather than a new agreement announced with the publication.
The report responds to a recommendation from the G20 Independent Review of Multilateral Development Bank Capital Adequacy Frameworks for yearly capital benchmarking. Its first edition appeared in 2025. The latest publication also sits alongside efforts to make loan-performance data more comparable through the Global Emerging Markets Risk Database consortium.
ADB says the figures show that multilateral lenders have maintained substantial buffers while continuing to support economies under strain. The report’s own qualifications matter: the data summarise a diverse group, largely at the end of 2025, and do not establish that every institution has the same capacity or faces identical risks. They provide a shared set of indicators for scrutiny, rather than a forecast of future lending or a promise that buffers will remain unchanged.
