Another profitable piece of corporate banking business is under direct fire from outside the industry: institutional investors are keen to play a greater role in financing Asia-Pacific infrastructure. But according to a S&P Global Ratings discussion piece published yesterday, a number of roadblocks can limit participation. "Infrastructure offers long-duration investment opportunities and tends to have a lower default rate than the corporate sector," says S&P Global Ratings credit analyst Richard Langberg.But, he notes, in Asia investors often have trouble finding deals that match their mandates and risk settings. And the challenges of land acquisitions, right-of-way and environmental clearance issues cause delays. Regulatory uncertainties create risk premium and risk aversion.New instruments such as Komodo bonds in Indonesia (first issued in 2017) and Masala bonds for India (2016) provide a wider international investor base to the issuing companies without exposing them to currency risk. However, with these types of securities, the limited options to hedge long-term foreign-exchange is a drawback for investors.Thus some investors would prefer to provide financing at a later stage in the process, S&P days. Even so, there are risks. In Australia, regulators and business have had some "robust exchanges over pricing issues", with, for instance, disputes over a number of public-private partnerships, although "…looking back over the past decade, we'd find that 90 to 95 per cent of these structures go smoothly - that is, without major challenges or disputes," says S&P Global Ratings credit analyst Richard Timbs.