IFFIm earns an 'A+'

IFFIm earns an 'A+'

23 March 2022

IFFIm scored an A+ in the latest review from the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), released in February 2022. The UK, IFFIm’s founding and largest donor, evaluates IFFIm annually, and has consistently given IFFIm an A/A+ rating as an efficient, effective and equitable financial instrument. Since 2006, the UK has channelled £1.63 billion for Gavi’s core mission, and pledged an additional £500 million for the COVAX AMC in 2020.

The FCDO review formally covers the 2020 period and key outcomes of 2021 in assessing the performance of IFFIm as a funding instrument of Gavi. In explaining it’s A+ rating, the FCDO cited IFFIm as “a highly effective and efficient financial instrument supporting Gavi’s ability to achieve equitable access to immunisation despite challenging financial market conditions.” 

Since its inception in 2006, IFFIm has been a critical player in Gavi’s financial strategy. It is the main source of long-term, predictable and flexible funding for Gavi 5.0. Moreover, the pandemic has demonstrated in real time the importance of IFFIm’s proven frontloading model.

To date, IFFIm has leveraged total donor pledges of over US$ 8.875 billion committed over a 32-year period, providing approximately 16% of the overall resources supporting Gavi's vaccination programmes.

IFFIm has seen a surge of activity since the onset of the pandemic. Since April 2020, IFFIm vaccine bonds have raised in capital markets US$ 1.7 billion in immediately available funding for Gavi’s core immunisation programmes, and for the COVID-19 pandemic response through the COVAX AMC and CEPI. “These activities represent a shift in the level of activity in IFFIm, validating the theory of change, and demonstrate the value of the instrument to the UK in support of both Gavi’s core mission and response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the FCDO report states.

In addition to the FCDO rating, Standard & Poor’s (S&P) January 2022 report affirmed IFFIm’s ‘AA’ long term and ‘A-1’ short term issuer credit rating citing continued strong support from its main donors its mandate of supporting child immunisation, as well as efforts to address COVID-19, while accounting for risks. “The rating balances our view of IFFIm's policy importance and the creditworthiness of its main donor countries, which is anchored by our calculation of its debt service coverage ratio,” cites the report.

IFFIm’s other current credit ratings are Aa1 from Moody’s Investor Service and AA from Fitch Ratings.

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