Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA)
MIGA is the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, the World Bank Group institution that promotes foreign investment in developing countries by issuing guarantees against non-commercial risks. An international convention established MIGA on 12 April 1988. MIGA states that it unites 154 developing and 28 industrialised member countries and that, since 2024, it has been the home of the World Bank Group Guarantee Platform. MIGA is listed in the Berne Union member directory.
MIGA's about and products pages frame the Agency as an insurer and guarantor, not a lender. Guarantees protect public and private investments against specified political and related risks and, for certain products, provide credit enhancement so that lenders can extend financing into markets that would otherwise be constrained.
Mandate and World Bank Group role
As part of the World Bank Group, MIGA promotes investment in developing countries by reducing risk and fostering confidence among investors and lenders. Position within the Group provides access to global expertise and relationships with governments. The Guarantee Platform housed at MIGA provides a single access point to World Bank Group guarantee products from the balance sheets of MIGA, IFC and the World Bank.
MIGA does not finance projects and does not provide export credit insurance. Covered interests include equity, loans related to an investment project, and certain contracts whose remuneration depends on project revenues or production. That boundary separates MIGA cover from national export credit agency pure cover on export receivables, even when both appear in the same capital structure.
Product categories
Political risk guarantee categories on MIGA's products site include breach of contract, currency inconvertibility and transfer restriction, expropriation risk, and war and civil disturbance. Credit guarantee and related products address borrower or public-payment default exposures, including non-honouring of public debt and partial or full credit guarantees for loans and bonds. Trade finance guarantees cover selected short-term trade exposures such as trade loans and letter of credit confirmation.
In project finance and cross-border investment structures, banks and equity investors use MIGA cover as multilateral political risk insurance or credit enhancement. Cover can sit alongside IFC lending and private PRI capacity. Documentation treats MIGA as the named guarantor under a contract of guarantee, not as a syndicate lender.
Eligibility, tenor and disclosure
Eligible guarantee holders are generally nationals or entities of MIGA member countries other than the host country. Host-country nationals may be eligible in limited cases where invested funds come from outside the host country and the host joins the application. Guarantees typically run for periods of up to 15 years, and occasionally 20 years, with a stated minimum length of three years. Loan cover is usually matched to loan tenor.
After the first three years, guarantee holders may cancel under stated conditions, or as of the date of notice when the project enterprise is liquidated, declared bankrupt or placed in receivership, or the guarantee holder has no legal interest in the guaranteed project. MIGA may cancel for investor breach. Proposed and signed guarantees are disclosed through summaries and project briefs, subject to proprietary carve-outs. Environmental and social information is disclosed for projects with potentially adverse impacts.
Currency inconvertibility and transfer restriction cover addresses inability to legally convert local currency into hard currency or to transfer hard currency outside the host country under the policy definitions. Breach of contract cover addresses losses from a host government's repudiation of a contract. Credit products address different default perils than the political risk categories, with the distinction set out in the contract of guarantee.
Institutional boundaries
Each MIGA guarantee is documented by product category, host country membership, investor eligibility, tenor, covered percentage and waiting periods, with guarantee proceeds structured against the underlying facility's security package. MIGA's membership and government relationships give the Agency a role in deterrence and resolution when host governments are counterparties to covered risks. That institutional feature does not convert MIGA into a lender of record or into a national export credit insurer.
MIGA is therefore the World Bank Group's multilateral non-commercial risk insurer and, since 2024, the home of the Group's Guarantee Platform, delivering political risk, credit and selected trade finance guarantees for eligible investments into developing members.