AIIB Brand Guidelines: A Beijing Bank Opened in 2016 With 57 Founding Members

Twenty-one signatures, five negotiating rounds and a charter.

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is one of the youngest of the multilateral development banks. English Wikipedia says China proposed it in October 2013, during a state visit to Indonesia. On 24 October 2014, representatives of 21 Asian countries signed a memorandum of understanding on establishing the bank in Beijing, and the first meeting of chief negotiators followed in Kunming on 28 November 2014, according to the bank’s own history.

The negotiators produced the Articles of Agreement, the bank’s charter. Representatives of the 57 prospective founding members gathered in Beijing on 29 June 2015 for the signing; English Wikipedia says 50 signed that day and the other seven later. In August 2015, at a negotiators’ meeting in Tbilisi, Jin Liqun was chosen by consensus as president-designate. The Articles entered into force on 25 December 2015, and on 16 January 2016 the Board of Governors held its inaugural meeting in Beijing, declared the bank open for business and elected Jin as its first president.

The bank began with 57 founding members, 37 regional and 20 non-regional, The Tribune reported in March 2026, citing the AIIB website.

Ratings, partners and a first office abroad.

The bank’s history page records the steps of its first decade. It signed a co-financing framework with the World Bank in April 2016 and a memorandum with the Asian Development Bank in May 2016, followed by agreements with the EBRD, the New Development Bank and the African Development Bank. Moody’s assigned it a triple-A rating in June 2017, and the bank says it is now rated AAA by the major international rating agencies. In December 2018 the United Nations granted it permanent observer status, and its Board approved the Project-affected People’s Mechanism, the bank’s route for complaints from people who say they are affected by projects it finances. Earlier steps included adopting, from March 2017, the debarment list shared by other development banks under their mutual enforcement agreement, and, in October 2017, a 0% risk weighting for eligible AIIB liabilities from the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.

In July 2019, at its annual meeting in Luxembourg, the AIIB reached 100 approved members; the same year it priced its first global bond, in London. On 19 September 2023 it opened its first overseas office, an Interim Operational Hub in Abu Dhabi. Its annual meetings have moved between members, among them Jeju in 2017, Mumbai in 2018, Sharm El Sheikh in 2023, Samarkand in 2024 and Beijing in 2025 for the tenth. In 2023 the bank also published its methodology for aligning new investments with the Paris Agreement, in July, and its first Climate Action Plan, in September.

Membership has kept growing since the Articles came into force, which English Wikipedia says required ratification by ten states holding half of the initial subscriptions. The bank’s register dates the most recent arrivals to 2025, among them El Salvador and Nauru in February, Kuwait in May, Solomon Islands and Mauritania in June, Armenia in September, Tanzania in October and Senegal in December. In its first year, 2016, the bank committed to nine projects, six of them alongside other lenders such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, English Wikipedia says.

Jin Liqun served two five-year terms, having been re-elected in July 2020, and stayed in office until 15 January 2026, the bank says. The Board of Governors elected Zou Jiayi as the next president on 24 June 2025, and in March 2026 The Tribune reported her meeting India’s finance minister as the bank’s new president, describing India as the second-largest shareholder.

How development banks present themselves.

Development banks are owned by their member countries and economies rather than by private shareholders, and their websites put that ownership up front. The Asian Development Bank lists its 69 members with the year each one joined; the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank publishes a register of regional, non-regional and prospective members with their subscriptions and voting power. For these institutions the shareholder list is part of the brand, set out as openly as a logo.

Names travel in several languages. ADB’s website runs in English, Japanese and Chinese, with some country pages in other languages, and most of these lenders are known by short sets of initials that have to read the same on a loan document in one country and a project sign in another. The palettes in this group of guides lean on deep blues, greens and teals, chosen here as our own unofficial interpretations rather than official colours.

Their websites are organised around what they finance and where. ADB’s menus divide its work by region and subregional programme and separate public- from private-sector financing, which can take the form of loans, guarantees or equity; the AIIB sorts its project list by status, from proposed to approved, on hold or cancelled, and by sovereign-backed and nonsovereign-backed financing. These project databases are where a reader can follow a single road, power line or water scheme from proposal onward.

Accountability is presented as part of the same identity. ADB lists an Accountability Mechanism and Independent Evaluation among its pages; the AIIB has its Project-affected People’s Mechanism, approved in 2018. Alongside annual reports and financial statements, these evaluation pages and complaint routes are where the banks set out, in their own words, how their projects are reviewed.

“Lean, Clean, and Green.”

The AIIB states its mission as “Financing Infrastructure for Tomorrow in Asia and beyond,” names its core values as “Lean, Clean, and Green,” and says it has grown to 111 approved members across six continents. It describes the infrastructure it backs as green, technology-enabled and promoting regional connectivity, and publishes sector strategies for energy, transport, water, digital infrastructure and sustainable cities.

Its members page sets out the shareholder register in detail: separate regional, non-regional and prospective lists, each member shown with its membership date, total subscriptions and voting power, last updated in October 2026. That register shows China with the largest share of votes, a little over a quarter, and India next. Project pages are sorted by status — approved, proposed, on hold, and terminated or cancelled — and by sovereign-backed and nonsovereign-backed financing.

The headquarters is in the Asia Financial Center in Beijing’s Chaoyang district. The website offers a WeChat account alongside its other channels and publishes its content under a Creative Commons IGO licence.

For a design guide, the AIIB shows how a young institution builds a four-letter name around one repeated mission line; compare the Asian Development Bank, with which it has jointly funded projects in the Philippines, English Wikipedia says, and the World Bank, with which it signed its first co-financing framework. For this guide we use a deep jade, a pale celadon and a slate grey with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep AIIB’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.