When G20 Finance Ministers asked the International Financial Architecture Working Group in 2023 to chart a path to better, bigger, and more effective multilateral development banks, they called for transformational reforms. The 2024 G20 Roadmap translated that ambition into thirteen concrete recommendations on operating as a system, mobilising private capital, expanding lending headroom, and directing concessional resources to where they matter most. A new report, titled, 'More Critical Than Ever: Strengthening Growth and Resilience Through the MDBs', produced by researchers from four independent think tanks, takes stock of progress and identifies the priorities for the way ahead. It finds that two years on, the MDBs have responded on a broad front, with progress on balance sheet optimisation, instruments from hybrid capital to guarantee platforms coming online, and institutions that once worked in parallel increasingly working in concert. While the direction of travel is right, the pace is not. Aggregate commitments have grown by less than ten per cent in real terms, much of the new headroom sits unused, and private capital mobilisation, while being impressive in the aggregate, has actually fallen in the low-income countries that need it most. That shortfall would matter in any circumstance, but in the present context, it matters far more because the ground has shifted beneath the reform effort itself.