The Seoul Center for Finance and Innovation (Seoul Center) was created through a partnership between the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MoEF) of the Republic of Korea and the World Bank Group (WBG), formalized by a Memorandum of Understanding signed on October 11, 2011. The Seoul Center started operating in 2012 as a virtual pilot from Washington DC, and relocated to the WBG Korea Office in mid-2015. The objective of the Seoul Center partnership is to "improve and develop financial and private sectors in the East Asia and Pacific (EAP) region by delivering better technical assistance and advisory services to EAP countries."
To achieve this objective, the Seoul Center provides grants to support demand-driven, priority technical assistance and capacity building needs in EAP client countries. The primary work of the Seoul Center is to manage and implement a trust fund that supports financial and private sector development in developing EAP countries. In addition, demand-driven analytics, advisory work, and capacity building are conducted through the Seoul Center by leveraging institutions and knowledge from Korea.
The Seoul Center focused on financial sector development under the first two phases (April 2012–June 2020). Under Phase 3 (July 2020–present), the Seoul Center expanded to include private sector development, especially innovation-related themes. The geographic coverage for the technical assistance and knowledge exchange also expanded beyond EAP countries. Please click here to learn more about the achievement of the Seoul Center since its inception.
