Representatives from eighteen nations gathered in Montréal, Canada from March 23 to 26, 2026, to negotiate the founding charter of a proposed new multilateral financial institution unlike any that has ever existed: the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank, or DSRB. If the charter talks succeed on schedule — with operations targeted for late 2026 — the DSRB would become the world's first multilateral development bank dedicated entirely to financing defence, security, and resilience spending.
For procurement professionals working in defence, infrastructure, technology, and logistics, this is one of the most consequential institutional developments of the decade. A well-capitalised multilateral lender with a mandate to finance long-term defence contracts, underwrite SME supply chains, and standardise cross-border procurement will fundamentally change how allied governments acquire defence goods and services.
The Montreal Negotiations and What Was Decided
The Montréal session, hosted by the Government of Canada and led by Isabelle Hudon, President and CEO of the Business Development Bank of Canada, was the first of three planned in-person rounds of negotiations. Its purpose was to begin drafting the bank's legal charter — the document that will define governance, voting rights, capital structures, eligible borrowers, and the bank's operational mandate.
Canada's Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne confirmed that more than ten nations were present for discussions on the first day alone, with eighteen government delegations ultimately participating across the four-day session. The full list of participating nations has not been officially released, but prior reporting and the composition of the DSRB Development Group's advisory network suggest the discussions involve major NATO contributors including the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Australia, Japan, and South Korea — reflecting the bank's ambition to extend beyond the NATO alliance to include high-capability democratic partners.
The DSRB is not a new idea. Rob Murray, CEO of the DSR Bank Development Group, first conceived the institution in 2018. What changed in 2025 and early 2026 was urgency: defence spending across the alliance has accelerated sharply in response to Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine, China's military build-up, and US pressure on NATO members to reach and exceed the 2% GDP spending target. Canada, notably, announced in March 2026 that it had officially hit the NATO 2% threshold for the first time.
A second round of negotiations is expected in April 2026, with charter completion targeted for mid-year parliamentary ratification. By late Q4 2026, the bank's inaugural operations could begin.
How the DSRB Will Work
The DSRB is structured around three distinct financing mechanisms, each targeting a different gap in the current defence procurement and industrial base financing landscape.
First, the bank will raise funds on bond markets at triple-A rated rates — a status only achievable through multilateral ownership and callable capital guarantees from member states. By borrowing cheaply and lending at subsidised rates to member governments, the DSRB can reduce the effective cost of long-term defence investments, making 15-to-30-year procurement programmes financially viable without requiring large upfront appropriations from national budgets. This is particularly valuable for smaller NATO members that face high borrowing costs when they try to fund major defence acquisitions independently.
Second, the bank will use loan conditionality to improve procurement outcomes. When the DSRB lends to a government for a major defence programme, the loan terms can require interoperability standards, contract compliance conditions, and schedule milestones. This addresses one of the most persistent problems in allied defence procurement: multi-year contracts that are cancelled, redesigned, or delayed, causing massive cost overruns for industrial partners who have already committed capital to production capacity. Loan conditionality backed by a multilateral lender creates a binding form of procurement discipline that no individual government can easily override.
Third, the bank will issue guarantees to commercial banks, enabling them to extend credit to defence supply chain companies — especially small and medium enterprises — that currently cannot access affordable financing. For many defence SMEs, the problem is not demand: they have long-term contracts with major prime contractors or governments. The problem is that commercial lenders treat defence as a specialised, uncertain risk. DSRB guarantees change this calculus, unlocking working capital for manufacturers, electronics suppliers, logistics providers, and specialised technology firms across the alliance.
The bank's target capitalisation is approximately £100 billion (roughly $130 billion), funded through member-state callable capital commitments of £20 billion combined with bond market borrowing. Six major global banks — Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, ING, JP Morgan, LBBW, and RBC Capital Markets — have publicly backed the initiative, signalling strong institutional confidence in the DSRB's creditworthiness and market access.
What the DSRB Will Finance
The DSRB's mandate covers three broad categories of eligible expenditure.
The first is resilient infrastructure: military mobility networks (roads, bridges, rail, ports that can sustain both civilian and military use), energy security infrastructure (pipelines, power generation, fuel storage), cybersecurity systems, and logistics networks. This category overlaps substantially with dual-use civilian infrastructure — a deliberate design choice that broadens the bank's political constituency and allows procurement that benefits both defence planners and civilian economic development.
The second is dual-use technologies: artificial intelligence and autonomous systems, space-based capabilities (communications, navigation, imagery), advanced defence manufacturing equipment, and industrial base modernisation. Many of these programmes involve technology tenders that would be accessible to non-defence-specific IT and engineering firms with the right clearances and certifications.
The third is sovereign defence programmes: direct lending to member governments for national defence and resilience projects, from ammunition stockpiling and weapons system procurement to civil protection infrastructure and critical mineral supply chain development. This category includes works contracts for physical infrastructure and supplies contracts for equipment and materials.
Critically, the bank is explicitly designed to finance supply chain production capacity, not just finished weapons systems. This means procurement opportunities will cascade through multiple tiers — from prime contractors down to component manufacturers, electronics integrators, software developers, testing laboratories, training providers, and maintenance organisations.
Procurement Implications: A New Class of Contract Opportunity
For procurement professionals, the DSRB represents the opening of an entirely new category of multilateral-funded tenders. Today, the major development banks focus on civilian development — infrastructure, education, health, agriculture. Defence spending is explicitly excluded from most MDB mandates, including the World Bank and regional development banks.
The DSRB changes this. Member governments that borrow from the bank for defence programmes will be required to follow procurement procedures defined in the DSRB's charter — likely modelled on international best practices for transparency, competitive bidding, and supplier certification. This means DSRB-financed contracts will be subject to structured procurement processes that foreign firms can access, unlike purely national defence acquisitions that are often reserved for domestic industry.
For consulting tenders, the DSRB opens large opportunities in: defence procurement advisory services, military logistics planning, cybersecurity assessments, dual-use infrastructure feasibility studies, and technology transfer programme management. For works contracts, the biggest early opportunities will be in military mobility infrastructure — roads, bridges, and railway upgrades across Eastern Europe and the Baltic states that need to sustain NATO force movements. For supplies contracts, ammunition, communications equipment, surveillance systems, and energy storage systems are all likely early procurement categories.
The bank's explicit focus on SME supply chains is significant. Defence prime contractors (Rheinmetall, BAE Systems, Leonardo, Thales, Saab, L3Harris) typically already have access to capital. The DSRB's commercial bank guarantee mechanism is specifically designed to reach the second and third-tier suppliers — the electronics manufacturers, precision engineering firms, software companies, and specialised materials producers — that have defence contracts but struggle to finance production ramp-up. These are often the firms that supply to defence and security tenders without being large primes.
Countries and Regions Affected
The DSRB's core membership will be drawn from NATO allies and close democratic partners. Based on participation in the Montreal negotiations and prior interest expressed at the September 2025 London information session — which attracted 37 of 41 invited governments — the founding member landscape is expected to include:
- North America: Canada (lead), United States (JP Morgan's public support suggests strong US backing)
- Western Europe: United Kingdom, Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Italy
- Northern Europe: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania
- Asia-Pacific: Australia, Japan (submarines, advanced technology), South Korea (AI, autonomy, shipbuilding)
The geographic distribution of DSRB lending will follow member states' defence priorities. Eastern European members (Poland, the Baltic states, Romania) have the most urgent need for force-posture infrastructure investment along NATO's eastern flank. Australia and Japan bring Pacific maritime priorities. Germany and France bring the industrial base depth needed to scale up production across the alliance.
For procurement professionals based in infrastructure construction and technology, the most actionable early opportunities will be in Eastern European military mobility projects, followed by digital defence infrastructure across the Baltic region.
Canada's Broader Defence Procurement Overhaul
Canada's role as DSRB host reflects a broader transformation of its own defence procurement system. On February 17, 2026, Canada launched its Defence Industrial Strategy — a major policy overhaul centred on a new "Build-Partner-Buy" framework that prioritises Canadian industrial participation in defence contracts, followed by allied partnership arrangements, and only then direct acquisition from foreign primes.
Alongside this, Canada announced the creation of a new Defence Investment Agency (DIA), tasked with cutting bureaucratic delays that have made Canadian defence procurement chronically slow. The DIA is expected to consolidate what has historically been a fragmented system spread across multiple departments.
For international suppliers, the "Partner" tier of Build-Partner-Buy creates structured pathways for allied firms — including those from DSRB member states — to participate in Canadian defence contracts through offset arrangements, joint ventures, or licensed production deals. Combined with DSRB financing, this could accelerate several Canadian programmes that have languished for years: Arctic patrol vessel upgrades, fighter aircraft support infrastructure, army vehicle modernisation, and cyber defence systems.
Canada's C$73 billion defence spending plan through 2035, which includes commitments that pushed it past the NATO 2% GDP threshold, will generate procurement activity across all contract types — but especially in long-duration services and maintenance agreements for newly acquired platforms.
What This Means for Contractors
For firms active in defence, security, and dual-use sectors, the DSRB creates both immediate and medium-term opportunities.
Immediately, firms should monitor the charter negotiation process. When the DSRB finalises its procurement framework — likely by mid-2026 — it will define which contract categories are open to international competition, what supplier certification requirements apply, and what thresholds trigger public tendering. Early engagement with national contact points and the DSRB Development Group itself will be essential to shape these rules.
In the medium term, the bank's SME guarantee programme is the most transformative element for smaller defence suppliers. A firm that has won a defence contract but cannot finance the working capital to scale up production will have a new mechanism available: a commercially issued loan backed by a DSRB guarantee. This could be the difference between winning and delivering a contract.
For non-defence firms in adjacent sectors — civil engineering, IT, logistics, training, energy — the DSRB's dual-use mandate and resilient infrastructure focus will generate tenders that do not require defence clearances. Military mobility infrastructure, energy resilience projects, and civil protection systems are procured through standard public tendering processes.
Browse defence and security tenders on BidsFactory to track current opportunities from existing sources while the DSRB's procurement framework takes shape.
Looking Ahead
The DSRB charter is expected to complete its three rounds of negotiations by mid-2026, with parliamentary ratification in member states to follow. If the timeline holds, the bank could make its first operational decisions before the end of the year — with bond issuance and initial lending programmes beginning in 2027.
The institution is being built at precisely the moment when allied defence spending is rising to levels not seen since the Cold War. NATO's collective defence spending crossed $1.5 trillion annually in 2025. The DSRB will not add to this total, but it will make the spending more efficient, more coordinated, and more accessible to a wider range of suppliers.
For procurement professionals, the advice is straightforward: understand the DSRB's emerging procurement framework now, before contracts are tendered. The firms that win early DSRB-financed contracts will be those that engaged with the institution's requirements during the design phase.
Browse all international tenders on BidsFactory to stay current on opportunities across defence, infrastructure, technology, and the full spectrum of international development procurement.