Yangon, Myanmar
UNDP Yangon
Job ID: 26999
Practice Area – Job Family: Management – PROGRAMME ANALYST (FINANCIAL INCLUSION)
Vacancy End Date: (Midnight New York, USA) 20/11/2019
Duty Station: Yangoon, Myanmar
Education & Work Experience: I-Master’s Level Degree – 3 year(s) experience
Languages: English
Grade: SB4
Vacancy Type: Service Contract (SC)
Posting Type: External
Bureau: Asia & the Pacific
Contract Duration: 1 year
Background
UNCDF makes public and private finance work for the poor in the world’s 47 least developed countries. With its capital mandate and instruments, UNCDF offers ‘last mile’ finance models that unlock public and private resources, especially at the domestic level, to reduce poverty and support local economic development.
UNCDF’s financing models work through two channels: financial inclusion that expands the opportunities for individuals, households, and small businesses to participate in the local economy, providing them with the tools they need to climb out of poverty and manage their financial lives; and by showing how localized investments — through fiscal decentralization, innovative municipal finance, and structured project finance — can drive public and private funding that underpins local economic expansion and sustainable development. By strengthening how finance works for poor people at the household, small enterprise, and local infrastructure levels, UNCDF contributes to SDG 1 on eradicating poverty and SDG 17 on the means of implementation. By identifying those market segments where innovative financing models can have transformational impact in helping to reach the last mile and address exclusion and inequalities of access, UNCDF contributes to a number of different SDGs.
Since 2008, UNCDF has been supporting digital finance with significant success, with digital finance currently the largest part of its inclusive finance portfolio. This includes digital innovations linked to on an off-grid energy, agriculture, employment, health and transport.
UNCDF is also host to the Secretariat of the Better than Cash Alliance, a partnership of governments, companies, and international organizations that accelerates the transition from cash to digital payments in order to reduce poverty and drive inclusive growth.
With 60 professionals with strong digital finance experience across the globe and with several hundred projects in digital on-going, UNCDF is one of the leading development agencies in digital finance with a mission and expertise to reach very low-income customers in some of the world’s most difficult markets. UNCDF’s digital team and resources are currently spread across several programmes and UNCDF is in the process of consolidating its financial and technical resources to create a comprehensive team of experts in various domains to drive the new strategy ‘Leaving no one behind in the digital era’
Based on this experience UNCDF started in 2017 to expand the scope of its programmatic agenda to go beyond digital finance. Through the ‘Leaving none behind in the digital era’ strategy, UNCDF is supporting, through its digital finance interventions, the emergence of inclusive digital economies. The strategy recognizes that reaching the full potential of digital financial inclusion in support of the SDGs aligns with the vision of promoting digital economies for the following reasons:
- The value of DFS is not obvious, especially to poor and vulnerable populations, as it is not closely linked to their ability to respond to their specific constraints and needs around agriculture, education, health, energy and other key aspects of their daily lives.
- New innovative services should be developed to address these unmet needs. Innovation will not come from traditional providers but mainly from a range of new players (entrepreneurs, start-ups in various sectors, and platforms like Facebook, Grab, WeChat, etc.).
The ‘Leaving no one behind in the digital era’ strategy, to move from DF to digital economies builds upon and constitutes a logical integration of UNCDF interventions in financial inclusion and digital, developed over many years. The legacy of UNCDF intervention programmes was built through a range of country/regional programmes and global thematic initiatives, which has established a very strong reputation for UNCDF vis-à-vis donors and peers.
UNCDF’s work on inclusive finance in Myanmar:
UNCDF’s work on inclusive finance seeks to develop inclusive financial systems and ensure that a range of financial products is available to all segments of society, at a reasonable cost, and on a sustainable basis. UNCDF supports a wide range of providers (e.g. financial inclusion institutions, banks, cooperatives, money transfer companies) and a variety of financial products and services (e.g. savings, credit, insurance, payments, and remittances). UNCDF also supports newer delivery channels (e.g. mobile phone networks) that offer tremendous potential for scale.
Expanding Financial Access (EFA) Programme: To support the government of Myanmar in the implementation process of the Financial Inclusion Roadmap, UNCDF developed the programme ‘Expanding Financial Access (EFA) that focuses on priority areas of the Financial Inclusion Roadmap. Started in 2015, EFA is the core programme in Myanmar and works hand in hand at the country level with other regional and global UNCDF.
The EFA programme intends, by 2021, to increase the percentage of the adult population which are financially included from 30% in 2015 to 40%, and those which use more than one financial product from 6% to 15%. Moreover, EFA aims to have 830,000 low income direct beneficiaries and 3 million indirect ones by providing a full range of affordable, quality, effective and responsible financial services to MSME, small-scale farmers, women-led enterprises, youth, poor and low-income clients by encouraging stakeholders to work together in an integrated manner.
A core component of EFA is the Market Development Facility (MDF) which seeks to address systemic market failures in a number of thematic areas through targeted financing solutions. It functions as a catalytic wholesale financial agent able to take-on risk and leverage outside sources of capital to boost funding to undercapitalized Myanmar-based FSPs. NGO to Company transformation services are provided to more ideally position lower tier FSPs for debt financing. Transformation services and related technical services within the framework of the Leaving No One Behind (LNB) project planned for the 2020 to 2022 performance period.
Digital Financial Services and Women’s Economic Empowerment are also critical cross-cutting themes and form the basis for a number of UNCDF Myanmar interventions, and the Clean Start programme provides funding to institutions working in renewables and clean energy. EFA also works in partnership with the innovative regional Shaping Inclusive Finance Transformations (SHIFT) funding facility which aims to accelerate financial inclusion across the ASEAN region.
Another component recently added to the EFA Programme is the Women’s Economic and Financial Inclusion Initiative aims at increasing 200,000 women and girls’ awareness of, access to, and use of agency over appropriate financial products and services responsibly provided by diverse and sustainable service providers in a well-regulated environment with a focus on conflict-affected areas of Myanmar. As a result, FSPs will have an enhanced capacity to collect, analyse and use sex-disaggregated financial inclusion data. They will be able to recognize the importance of serving diverse segments of women and girls leading to an expertise to design and pilot financial products and services customized to their needs. At the institutional level, FSPs will be able to implement policies and practices to enhance the gender diversity of their workforce as well as promote leadership programmes for women at staff and management levels.
On the demand-side, women and girls will have greater access to financial information and services offering the potential for an enhanced quality of life and expanded livelihood and development opportunities.
In line with the ‘Leaving no one behind in the digital era’ strategy. Myanmar has also been developing a country digital strategy that will be implemented in the coming years. The Programme Analyst – Financial Inclusion – will play a key role in the implementation of all the above-mentioned initiatives under EFA programme as well as the Myanmar country digital strategy.
The Programme Analyst -Financial Inclusion will work under the overall supervision of Myanmar FIPA Country Coordinator and will be supported by other team members in the Myanmar office as well as in the Regional Office in Bangkok, particularly the Programme Specialist (Result & Learning).
Duties and Responsibilities
Summary of Key Functions:
- Support to the MDF support toward financing lower tier FSP partners
- Monitoring LNB FSPs and project performance
- Networking and partnerships
- Capacity Building of LNB FSP partners and knowledge sharing
Support to the MDF partners’ selection process:
- Support the implementation of FSP related activities and partners’ selection process;
- Coordinate and quality check partners’ documentation for the selection process;
- Coordinate pre-investment activities with potential partners to increase visibility of the FSP and quality of applications;
- Facilitate pre-investment discussions with partners, including setting up performance indicators, milestones among others;
- Supporting FSP due diligence in a preparatory, field assessment, and reporting manner;
- Contribute to the drafting of the agreements with various partners.
Monitoring LNB FSPs and project performance:
- Maintain an awareness and reporting mechanism regarding FSPs institutional development and operational performance;
- Ensure the M&E system incorporates gender considerations and sex-disaggregated data;
- Monitor FSP partners performance by monitoring achievement of agreed milestones;
- Work closely with UNCDF management in developing solutions toward realigning FSP partners performance to agreed goals and objectives;
- Maintain close communication and relationship with FSP partners management;
- Compile all the documentation needed to process disbursements to the FSP partners.
Networking and partnerships:
- Explore potential partnerships between perspective grantees to meet project development objectives;
- Reach out to key local stakeholders such as investors, sectoral institutions, government;
- Support FSP partners in identifying opportunities to favor public and private sector engagements;
- Support financing endeavors to realize opportunities for the FSP to grow sustainably.
Capacity building of LNB FSP partners and knowledge sharing:
- Undertake capacity assessment of FSP partners;
- Provide mentorship and technical assistance to the FSP partners as needed;
- Draft all the relevant materials to carry out the mentorship and technical assistance activities successfully;
- Ensure wide dissemination of lessons learned and success stories to facilitate cross-learning for FSP partners.
Impact of Results
The key results have an impact on the overall success of the project by ensuring a strong performance of FSP partners contributing towards EFA outreach target achievement.
Competencies
- Demonstrates integrity and fairness by modeling UN values and ethical standards
- Promotes the vision, mission and strategic goals of UNCDF and UNDP
- Promotes ethics and integrity, creating organizational precedents
- Builds support and political acumen
- Builds and promotes effective teams
- Creates and promotes enabling environment for open communication
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- Creates an emotionally intelligent organization
- Shares knowledge across the organization and building a culture of knowledge sharing and learning
- Promotes learning and knowledge management/sharing is the responsibility of each staff member
- Ability to address gender equality and empowerment of women considerations in strategic and operational activities of UNCDF.
Functional Competencies:
- Job Knowledge/Technical Expertise
- Understands financial inclusion as well as the fundamental concepts of related financial market development
- Experience with UN ATLAS system
- Understands the relevance of financial inclusion for women
Knowledge Management and Learning
- Promotes a knowledge sharing and learning culture in the office
- In-depth knowledge on development issues
- Ability to advocate and provide policy advice at donor, regulator, and practitioner levels
- Actively works towards continuing personal learning and development, acts on learning plan and applies newly acquired skills
Building Strategic Partnerships
- Effectively networks with partners seizing opportunities to build strategic alliances relevant to the programme
- Identifies needs and interventions for capacity building of counterparts, clients and potential partners
- Promotes UNCDF’s agenda in inter-agency meetings
Development and Operational Effectiveness
- Ability to lead strategic planning, results-based management and reporting
- Good knowledge of RBM and M&E tools
- Good IT skills (MS Office, presentation, email, internet, ERM)
- Ability to lead implementation of new systems (business side), and affect staff behavioral/ attitudinal change
Management and Leadership
- Focuses on impact and result for the client and responds positively to feedback
- Leads teams effectively and shows conflict resolution skills
- Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude
- Demonstrates strong oral and written communication skills
- Builds strong relationships with clients and external actors
- Remains calm, in control and good humored even under pressure
- Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities
Required Skills and Experience
Education:
Master’s degree or equivalent in Business Administration, Public Administration, Economics, Political Science, Social Sciences or OR, first-level university degree in combination with 5 years of qualifying experience in Business Administration, Public Administration, Economics, Political Science, Social Sciences.
Experience:
- At least 3 years if applicant holds a Master’s degree, or at least 5 years, if applicant holds a first-level university degree of progressively responsible work experience in relevant financial sector experience at the national, including providing management advisory services consisting of project and programme management and support, hands-on experience in design, monitoring and evaluation of development projects;
- Working knowledge of financial inclusion, making markets work for the poor, and business law;
- Monitoring and reporting experience is required in areas including poverty impact measurement, financial inclusion, and service outreach aggregation according to various demographics;
- Experience in financial inclusion and financial inclusion institutions capacity building is required;
- Project implementation experience with the UN system is a strong asset;
- Hands-on experience with UN ATLAS system and UN Finance processing is preferred;
- Comprehensive knowledge of UNCDF programs and Myanmar financial sectors is a strong advantage.
- Requisite knowledge of Microsoft Office package such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Skype as well as experience in using online database systems.
Language Requirements:
- Fluency in oral and written English and Burmese languages.
Disclaimer
UNDP is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply.
Women are encouraged to apply the post.
Only those candidates in whose qualifications and experience the Organization has further interest will be contacted for subsequent interview(s). UNDP regrets its inability to reply individually or attend to telephone queries on the advertised posts.
More Information
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