At the heart of FI4INN, this flagship strategy offers a comprehensive roadmap for policymakers to diversify and modernise financing instruments for SMEs across Central Europe. It shows how regions can move beyond traditional grant-based systems towards a more balanced mix of financial tools, including loans, guarantees, equity, and blended finance models. Drawing on project analysis, stakeholder engagement, and pilot experiences, the strategy identifies key weaknesses in current financing ecosystems and proposes practical ways to improve accessibility, effectiveness, and alignment with business needs. It also builds on knowledge gathered through the FI4INN Virtual Knowledge Centre and regional exchange. A key supporting document, “Lessons Learned: Building a Diversified Finance Ecosystem”, captures the main insights generated throughout the project and translates them into practical recommendations for future use and replication.

Seven pilot actions across Central Europe form the practical backbone of FI4INN, allowing partners to test and co-design innovative financing approaches for SMEs and startups in real regional contexts. These pilots explore both the creation of new financial instruments and the improvement of existing ones, always in close cooperation with local stakeholders and end-users. The process combines experimentation on the ground with transnational peer review, ensuring that solutions are not only locally relevant but also transferable across regions. The main reference document, “Regional Pilot Designs: Concepts, Timelines and Expected Results”, brings together the seven pilot concepts in a structured way, outlining their objectives, implementation pathways, and expected impact.

Emerging directly from the pilot phase, these seven financing solutions reflect the diversity of regional needs and policy contexts across Central Europe. Each solution has been shaped through co-design with stakeholders and adapted to local market realities, ranging from equity-based instruments and blended finance models to improved guarantee schemes and hybrid support approaches. Together, they show how financial instruments can be made more responsive, targeted, and effective for SMEs and startups. Although still under development as a formal output, this portfolio already represents one of FI4INN’s most concrete results: a set of tested and transferable financing solutions that can inspire future regional and national policies.

A stronger financing ecosystem also requires better understanding of results. That is the role of this strategy: to provide a practical framework for monitoring and evaluating financial instruments supporting SMEs and startups. The strategy sets out how to assess not only financial performance, but also economic, social, and environmental impact, while keeping monitoring systems efficient and proportionate. It addresses common challenges such as data availability, indicator selection, and stakeholder alignment, helping policymakers and fund managers make more informed decisions. Its most practical component is the “M&E Toolkit for Financial Instruments", which translates the strategy into operational guidance through tools, indicators, and templates that can be directly applied in practice.

This output delivers region-specific roadmaps designed to strengthen the evaluation and performance management of financial instruments. Building on the common monitoring and evaluation framework developed in FI4INN, these regional roadmaps turn shared principles into tailored action plans for specific territories. Each roadmap is designed to reflect the governance structures, institutional capacities, and policy priorities of the region concerned, offering a clearer path towards more robust and transparent evaluation systems. Rather than applying a one-size-fits-all model, the roadmaps adapt the project’s M&E approach to local realities. As they take shape, they will provide regions with practical guidance on objectives, timelines, roles, and resources, strengthening the long-term quality and accountability of financial instrument management.