With a long collaboration history, Philips and Atradius DSB have developed a trusted partnership focused on delivering capital-intensive healthcare projects in markets where access to affordable, long-term financing remains one of the greatest barriers to implementation.
According to Jennie Santiago, healthcare investment in emerging markets is expanding in both scope and complexity. Projects now frequently integrate advanced imaging, diagnostic, and surgical technologies - requiring not only cutting-edge equipment but also significant upfront capital and robust support systems. Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) like Atradius DSB have become key enablers of this shift, offering insurance, guarantees, and financing tools that reduce political, currency, and commercial risks. By lowering perceived risk, ECAs make it possible for international lenders to back projects that would otherwise be inaccessible - transforming visionary infrastructure plans into fundable, real-world solutions.
While Philips delivers some of the most advanced medical technologies available, innovation alone isn’t enough. In many markets, the real challenge is unlocking financial pathways that allow hospitals and ministries to act. Philips Capital steps in as a strategic enabler, not a lender - structuring long-term deals with flexible repayment aligned to public budget cycles. This reduces the upfront burden, protects fiscal stability, and preserves borrowing capacity. More than supporting procurement, Philips Capital helps institutions deploy and scale modern care solutions - accelerating impact across a range of healthcare systems.
The partnership brings together Philips’ medical innovation, Philips Capital’s customized export financing, and Atradius DSB’s sovereign-backed risk mitigation. Jennie Santiago describes the collaboration as “a financial architecture designed to de-risk complexity and convert ambition into executable reality.” Together, the partners enable healthcare projects that might otherwise remain stalled - deemed too risky or costly by commercial lenders.
By mitigating political, commercial, and currency risks, and offering long-tenor financing with flexible repayment terms, the alliance reshapes the financial profile of capital-intensive healthcare investments. This synergy not only improves access to financing - often on more favorable terms - but also aligns the interests of manufacturers, governments, and financial institutions, increasing the chances that projects will scale, endure, and deliver long-term public benefit.
Financing obstacles remain significant. Shallow local capital markets, volatile currencies, high sovereign risk, and short lending tenors often deter traditional banks. As a result, even technically sound, high-impact proposals may stall - not due to lack of merit, but because the perceived risk outweighs lender appetite.
Beyond financing, healthcare infrastructure projects in emerging markets face significant operational hurdles. These include fragmented regulations, infrastructural gaps, and fragile logistics - especially in environments where supply chains are unreliable and projects span multiple jurisdictions. Delivering, installing, and maintaining high-value medical equipment requires navigating a maze of approvals, compliance requirements, and political contexts.
Aligning diverse stakeholders - from ministries and procurement agencies to hospitals, suppliers, and financiers - adds another layer of complexity. Missteps in coordination can delay timelines, escalate costs, or jeopardize project outcomes.
“The operational environment is often just as risky as the financial one,” notes Bob Barre. “You’re not only managing capital - but you’re also managing moving targets across legal systems, political interests, and physical supply chains.
“Execution hinges as much on managing relationships and expectations as it does on structuring credit. Without alignment, even urgent healthcare projects risk never making it off the ground.
In today’s complex global economy, exporting advanced healthcare technologies—such as AI-integrated healthcare systems and diagnostic imaging equipment—demands more than matching supply with demand. It requires financial innovation, institutional trust, and coordinated collaboration action across public and private sectors.
Over the past decade, the partnership between Philips, Philips Capital, and Atradius DSB has shown how strategic alignment can turn healthcare ambitions into real-world outcomes. By combining advanced medical technologies with flexible financing and sovereign-backed risk coverage, the partnership provides a proven model for delivering sustainable, high-impact healthcare where it’s needed most.
Without structured export financing, public healthcare institutions in emerging markets often struggle to access the capital needed for essential infrastructure. The issue is rarely a lack of available technology, but the absence of viable financial pathways. Ministries of Health and public hospitals are tasked with delivering critical facilities - from diagnostic labs to neonatal units - while navigating constrained budgets, volatile currencies, and limited credit options. The challenge is less about what to buy and more about how to finance it sustainably.
Jennie Santiago explains, “These buyers aren’t simply seeking funding - they need financing structures aligned with their public mandate. They’re accountable to citizens, not shareholders, and that must shape the terms.” Domestic banks often lack the capacity or willingness to provide large-scale, long-term financing. When credit is available, it usually comes with high interest rates and short maturities - terms that are impractical for most public buyers. Consequently, many vital projects are postponed, downsized, or abandoned - not for lack of need or urgency, but because the financing architecture doesn’t exist.
Structured export financing changes this dynamic. By incorporating export credit guarantees, concessional terms, and risk-sharing mechanisms, it enables buyers to secure affordable, long-term financing tailored to their operational realities - not just market norms. “It allows Ministries and hospitals to move from feasibility to delivery, from planning to procurement,” Jennie notes, “with the confidence that comes from financial structures designed for them.”
“Atradius DSB plays an important role in transforming the financial profile of public healthcare projects in emerging markets for Philips projects. By offering sovereign-backed guarantees and risk-sharing mechanisms, Atradius DSB reduces lenders’ exposure to political, currency, and commercial risks - de-risking transactions that would otherwise fall outside the mandate or risk tolerance of most international financiers.” -Jennie Santiago
This shift, Jennie emphasizes, unlocks access to significantly improved financing terms - allowing Ministries of Health and public hospitals to secure hard currency loans with longer tenors, lower interest rates, and repayment schedules aligned with their budgets. What once might have been deemed unbankable becomes a viable, sustainable investment that doesn’t jeopardize public finances. Beyond better loan conditions, Atradius DSB adds institutional credibility, signaling trust to financiers and enabling governments to move from reactive procurement toward strategic infrastructure planning. This empowers health systems to invest not only in equipment but also in continuity, clinical resilience, and long-term service delivery. Ultimately, Atradius DSB helps transform strategic healthcare goals into fundable projects - not by eliminating risk, but by restructuring it to enable progress.
Ultimately, Atradius DSB helps transform strategic healthcare goals into fundable projects - not by eliminating risk, but by restructuring it to enable progress.
Combining sovereign-backed risk mitigation, innovative financing, and advanced healthcare technology, the partnership between Philips, Philips Capital, and Atradius DSB redefines what’s financially possible across public and private health systems. This effort goes beyond closing a financing gap - it reshapes the framework for meaningful health investments, especially in markets underserved by traditional finance.
Where international banks once hesitated, Atradius DSB provides confidence through state-backed guarantees that neutralize sovereign and political risk, unlocking long-term, hard currency loans. Philips Capital complements this by tailoring financing structures to match the operational rhythms of ministries and hospitals - aligning repayments with budget cycles, procurement timelines, and care strategies.
With Philips’ technology at the core, these financing solutions support not just equipment purchases but readiness, resilience, and lasting patient impact. Advanced imaging, intensive care, and connected diagnostics become accessible not only in theory but in practice.
In this model, financial architecture empowers healthcare systems to plan, build, and deliver care with clarity, continuity, and credibility.
For more information on how your company can be supported in financing healthcare projects with tailor-made financial solutions, you can get in direct contact.
We look forward to helping you realize impactful and sustainable investments in healthcare.
