Accelerating investment in SDGs
The Policy Accelerator is UNCDF’s flagship policy advisory program for digital finance.
The Policy Accelerator helps countries translate digital finance public policy into investable, scale-ready outcomes that deepen financial systems and expand economic opportunities. By targeting the structural rules that shape digital enabled services, the Accelerator enables capital to reach the world’s most underserved economies.
Digital finance is central to UNCDF’s catalytic role: lowering costs, improving transparency, and unlocking investment in early-stage and last-mile markets across Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Small Island Developing States (SIDS), and fragile settings. Yet, market development often stalls where policy frameworks are fragmented, markets are concentrated, and institutional capacity is constrained. The Policy Accelerator tackles these barriers head-on.
The Policy Accelerator team is an integral part of UNCDF's global group of digital finance experts. The team brings a diverse range of expertise, from regulatory and supervisory policy in economic and financial systems to inclusive finance and gender-focused program design. Their collective skills include policy analysis, research, strategic communications, and capacity-building across Anglophone and Francophone markets. Together, they drive efforts to advance financial inclusion and build resilient systems that prioritize the needs of the most excluded populations.
The Policy Accelerator is a multi-country program operating across Asia, Africa, and the Pacific, leveraging lessons from leading markets to deploy best-in-class advisory and capacity-building initiatives.
Our approach
The program focuses on high-impact policy areas—financial sector competition, digital public infrastructure, investment incentives, and consumer safeguards—that determine whether digital finance can scale. Using a Market Systems Development approach, it targets the functions, rules, and relationships that underpin financial ecosystems, addressing root causes rather than isolated symptoms. The program also collaborates closely with local and international partners to bring together the skills, knowledge, and resources to support the needs of policymakers and regulators.
The Policy Accelerator delivers systemic change through four interconnected roles:
Policy Systems Enabler: UNCDF works with governments to diagnose bottlenecks, redesign regulatory frameworks, and convene structured public-private dialogue to guide coherent reform. Read more about our methodology here.
Capability Builder: Through tailored technical assistance, peer learning, and embedded advisory, UNCDF strengthens ministries, regulators, and central banks to design and implement inclusive, investment-ready financial policies. Discover how we apply capacity-building to our model here.
Investment Enabler: By aligning reforms with downstream pipeline needs, the Accelerator reduces risk, improves market predictability, and supports the entry of domestic and international capital. Find out more about how UNCDF mobilizes and catalyses an increase in capital flows for impactful investments.
Knowledge Broker: UNCDF curates and shares tools, evidence, and global insights—including the Policy Accelerator Guides—to promote standards-aligned, data-driven policymaking across countries. Find the tools and resources best suited to your organization.
While UNCDF deploys grants, loans, and guarantees, the Policy Accelerator plays an upstream role: enabling investment rather than executing transactions. By strengthening the systems that govern digital markets, it increases the credibility, stability, and readiness of national environments to absorb capital and deliver lasting impact.
Our impact
The Policy Accelerator strengthens the foundations of digital financial systems in some of the world’s most underserved markets. Its work has contributed to a myriad of policy and regulatory changes across Africa and Asia—improving competition, enhancing digital public infrastructure, and embedding consumer safeguards that build trust and transparency.
Through high-quality, impact-focused training, the program has equipped hundreds of policymakers and supervisors with the tools to govern rapidly evolving digital markets. The leaders in these institutions now shape environments that are more predictable, more open to innovation, and better aligned with national development priorities.
The reforms in the countries supported by the Accelerator operate within financial systems that collectively serve more than 450 million people, including women, MSMEs, and rural communities that rely on safe and affordable financial services.
The agile delivery model ensures that policy change, institutional capacity, and market incentives reinforce one another, creating durable conditions for innovation and investment.
As countries advance their digital and financial sector priorities, the Accelerator offers a proven, cost-effective platform to help governments build resilient, transparent, and people-centered financial ecosystems.
The first phase of the program was externally and independently evaluated. You can find the results of the evaluations here.