U/Labs — Applied Research & Development
Where the coalition's next
financial instruments are invented.
The United Economic Development Fund's applied R&D arm — prototyping the financial products, digital infrastructure and open standards markets do not yet supply, then piloting them in member economies and scaling what works.
The mandate
The fund exists to build financial infrastructure for a regenerative economy. The lab is where that infrastructure is designed — in the open, close to the ground, and ahead of the market.
- Model
- A distributed R&D network, not a single building
- Output
- Products · Infrastructure · Standards · Ventures
- Method
- Sense → Prototype → Pilot → Scale
- Convened by
- Member central banks & finance ministries
What we build
Five practices, one workshop.
- 01
Financial products & structures
Blended-finance vehicles, shared first-loss facilities, portable guarantees, and outcome- and local-currency-linked instruments — engineered so a unit of public risk cover moves a multiple of private capital.
- 02
Digital public infrastructure
Cross-border payment rails, tokenised settlement, interoperable digital identity and data exchange — the financial plumbing emerging markets are too often sold rather than able to own.
- 03
Data, measurement & intelligence
Geospatial and ground-truth monitoring, real-time results data, and collective-intelligence methods that turn local insight into evidence the fund can act on.
- 04
Ventures & capability
A regulatory sandbox and an accelerator for emerging-market financial innovation, spin-outs where a tool outgrows its pilot, and capacity embedded inside member institutions.
- 05
Open standards & knowledge
Frameworks, toolkits, and technical specifications released as public goods — so a solution proven in one economy can be adopted by twenty.
How the lab works
A cycle, run fast and in the open.
- 01
Sense
Bottom-up, with member central banks, ministries and communities — to find the friction markets have priced out.
- 02
Prototype
Small, fast, and inexpensive. We build the minimum instrument or system that tests the riskiest assumption first.
- 03
Pilot
In the field, in a real economy, under real rules — measured against a hypothesis set before we begin.
- 04
Scale
What works is handed to the fund and its partners to deploy at size. What does not is documented and published anyway.
Flagship programmes
Standing projects, each solving one hard thing.
- Financial engineering In field
Mosaic
A structuring engine and shared first-loss facility that assembles blended-finance vehicles in weeks, not quarters.
- Digital infrastructure Pilot
Ledger
Tokenised settlement and local-currency rails for cross-border development flows, built on open messaging standards.
- Data & intelligence Live
Terrain
Geospatial impact intelligence — satellite signal reconciled with ground truth — so outcomes are measured, not asserted.
- Open standards Live
Commons
An open library of the coalition's frameworks, toolkits and specifications, free for any institution to adopt.
- Ventures Cohort open
Forge
A venture studio and accelerator backing the founders building emerging-market financial infrastructure.
What comes out of the lab
Not papers. Instruments.
A lab is judged by what leaves it. Ours ships tools the fund and its members can put to work — and hands the rest to the field as public goods.
- Investable financial instruments & structures
- Reference implementations of digital infrastructure
- Open standards, specifications & toolkits
- Field evidence, evaluations & datasets
- Ventures & spin-outs
- Embedded capacity in member institutions
The lab in numbers
- $0B+
- Private capital mobilised by lab-built structures
- 0
- Pilots currently in the field
- 0+
- Open tools & standards published
- 0+
- Member economies with an embedded lab
A distributed lab, not a single building — embedded across member economies, drawing on collective intelligence from central banks, multilateral institutions, universities, technologists and community innovators.
Have a problem the market won't price?
Bring it to the lab. We co-build with members, partners and founders — from a first sketch to a piloted instrument.