This article analyses two events in 2010, which attempted to reimagine the role of the financial sector in promoting international development. Several strategies for reimagining are identified and described, and mutually reinforcing barriers to reimagining are outlined. The challenges for moving from ideas to action are particularly difficult for a sector that is often impenetrable to those outside of it. The global nature of the sector is also key to the challenge of reimagining, whether proponents for change are inside or outside of it.