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Collaborative for Frontier Finance: ESCP Convening 2025

Friday 28 February 17:00-22:00 - Ecosystem Convening

Welcome

Building connection and context for each other, the challenges we’ve gathered to address, our hopeful outcomes, and potential for achieving more together through collaboration.

Cocktails & Dinner

Saturday 1 March 9:00-17:00 - Ecosystem Convening�

Orienting to the Ecosystem

Set stage for shared understanding, empathy, and increased awareness as to why systemic and organizational barriers exist. Identify the gaps and challenges most important to fill in order to take effective action that moves things forward.

Toward Unlocking Capital: Clarifying returns for an emerging asset class

Demonstrate success stories of returns while reality checking expectations and tolerances. Bring together insights and leverage them to clarify why this asset class is important. Identify how we’d like to shift narratives and outline where to advocate for the asset class.

Lunch

Getting into Each Other's Business

Understand more about the focus and thematics of each other's work and seed opportunities for further conversation and collaboration.

Co-learning Breakout Sessions

Discussions focused on bringing awareness to what is working and where there are challenges.

Closing conversations to lift up insights

Dinner

Sunday 2 March 9:00-17:00 - Ecosystem Convening until 14:00, Network only from 14:00

Strategic Initiatives

Grow our understanding of strategic work that’s underway. Learn about what’s emerging and how the ecosystem can become more aware of intersections and opportunities to effectively coordinate action.

Ecosystem Initiatives

Learn about the role various initiatives are playing and how they are reshaping practices. Five discussions illustrating various approaches to platforms and discussions about how they are mobilizing capital (or not).

Convening Agenda

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Collaborative for Frontier Finance: ESCP Convening 2025

Sunday 2 March 14:00-17:00

Collaborative Solutions from the Ground-Up

We meet at three groups to do cross-cutting sensemaking across the ecosystem with an aim to engage key issues that need advocacy, coordination, and innovation to effectively address. Conversations will add depth and intersectionality to make opportunities visible.

Lunch

Supporting System Wide Coordination

Identify what’s necessary in the ecosystem to facilitate collaboration and innovation amongst key players in the SME finance space.

Closing with Ecosystem Partners Discuss a learning agenda and follow-up actions.

START NETWORK ONLY CONVENING

The Network as a Strategic Response

Reflect on previous conversations with LPs & Ecosystem actors, connect to network potential, capacity, and ambition to take action. Discuss an agenda to influence the ecosystem.

Staying Vibrant & Engaged

Refocus on intrinsic motivation and purpose behind our work. Connect to out inspiration as a means of supporting one another to stay engaged for the long haul.�

Fireside chats

Discussions with LCPs to learn more about key learnings, pivots they’ve made, and successes.

Network Evolution

Engage in co-creating action to advance and evolve the network. Identify a common learning agenda and key follow up actions, including who’s carrying what forward.

Lunch

Coordination and Support

Discuss coordination, clarify who is leading on workstreams, accountability, touchpoints and the support CFF will offer.

Closing Reflect on the previous days, restate commitments, follow-up and next steps.

Dinner

Convening Agenda

Monday 3 March 9:00-15:30

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Collaborative for Frontier Finance: ESCP Convening 2025

How a Convening is different from a Conference

A collective journey. We’re a small group in a shared experience from start to finish. Not a small fish in an ocean of attendees popping in and out of simultaneous sessions and tracks.
It’s participatory. Rather than being in the stands, talked to from a sage on stage, your engagement is essential. Sessions are curated for active sharing and discussions that draw in multiple perspectives.
Flexible spaces. No amphitheaters or classrooms here. We bring people together in a variety of ways through the day, often in circles, rarely around tables. We shapeshift to shape new ideas.
Intentional design. Sessions are crafted to weave experiences and learning over the course of multiple days. What happens at the beginning sets the stage for the fruits that emerge at the end and beyond.
Relationships + Content. Convenings are about connecting people in ways that make more possible. Activities invite play to spark creativity and learning.
Holistic + Diverse. Convenings mix it up to avoid echo chambers and groupthink. We assemble as many perspectives in a system as possible so that we can put our pieces together and become greater than the sum of our parts.

Encouragements

Be courageous—share successes and failures; initiate bold action and adapt to change before things are broken
Practice humility—be humble in the face of complexity; value people and social learning as a process
Integrate perspectives—actively seek out other voices, examine assumptions, and consider multiple worldviews
Co-create from diversity—lean into creative tension and listen for opportunities to bridge differences
Steward the future—hold the bigger picture in view, tell the longterm story
Cultivate the ecosystem—think relationally, act in service of collective flourishing
Foster synergies—champion cross-functional teams and inter-organizational collaborations