Background

Instructions to Applicants: Click on the "Apply now" button. Input your information in the appropriate Sections: personal information, language proficiency, education, resume and motivation. Upon completion of the first page, please hit "submit application" tab at the end of the page. Please ensure that CV or P11 and the Cover letter are combined in one file.

The following documents shall be required from the applicants:

Personal CV or P11, indicating all past positions held and their main underlying functions, their durations (month/year), the qualifications, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) of the Candidate, and at least three (3) the most recent professional references of previous supervisors. References may also include peers.

A cover letter (maximum length: 1 page) indicating why the candidate considers him-/herself to be suitable for the position.

Managers may ask (ad hoc) for any other materials relevant to pre-assessing the relevance of their experience, such as reports, presentations, publications, campaigns or other materials.

UNCDF is the UN’s capital investment agency for the world’s least developed countries (LDCs). It creates new opportunities for poor people and their communities by increasing access to inclusive finance and investment capital. UNCDF focuses on Africa and the poorest countries of Asia and the Pacific, with a special commitment to countries emerging from conflict or crisis. It can provide seed capital both grants and loans as well as technical support that will improve poor peoples’ lives.

The UNCDF digital agenda for migration and remittances falls within the organization’s broader global strategy, set forth in 2019, of “Leaving No One Behind in the Digital Era.” This vision is to empower millions of people by 2024 to use services daily that leverage innovation and technology and contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals. Through a market development approach, UNCDF continuously seeks to address underlying market dysfunctions. The Programme contributes to, and benefits from, this overarching corporate mandate. The Programme is administered by UNCDF with funding from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, or SDC, and Sida, the Swedish International Development Agency.

UNCDF’s Migration and Remittances for Development Programme, or the Programme, aims at contributing to sustainable development by making remittances more accessible and affordable, while helping build resilience for migrants and their families. For both sending and receiving countries, the Programme seeks to increase the share of migrant remittances flowing through formal channels, thereby giving policymakers at both ends greater visibility into the true picture of inbound and outbound financial flows. For remittances service providers, the Programme seeks to build the capacity to understand the financial needs and preferences of migrants and their families, and to design and deliver responsive products accordingly. For migrants themselves, the Programme aims not only to lower the costs and increase the safety and convenience of sending money, but also to link remittances to a broader suite of financial services—including insurance,

savings, pensions, investments, and credit—that can help them reach their goals. The Programme recognizes digitization as the key to achieving these objectives.

1. Institutional Arrangement

The direct supervisor of the System and Research Analyst will be the Systems and Research Lead, Migration and Remittance portfolio at UNCDF.

Duties and Responsibilities

Scope of Work

Theme 1: Conduct thematic research on digital financial inclusion, migration, remittances and gender with specific reference to last mile target segments of women, youth, migrant and remittances, MSMEs, using demand side and supply side data:

• Implement and conduct quantitative research analytics including surveys (i.e. IVR, CATI), mixed method approaches, and big data analytics. Analyze sex, youth, migrant- and other disaggregated to inform and shape policies, inclusive innovation, digital ecosystem market studies, customer empowerment.
• Analyze, consolidate and communicate data and insights pieces and publications on financial and economy market supply and demand side surveys (Findex, Finscope, National surveys, lean data) with focus on sex, youth, migrant and other demographic and geographic disaggregated data analytics.
• Conduct research projects that employ a variety of methods, including literature reviews, web- scraping, and big data analytics.
• Apply rigorous academic methods (i.e. econometrics, statistics, machine learning) to research projects for the creation of new sector knowledge.
• Provide technical support to RSP partners in human-centric design techniques for gender-smart and migrant-centric product development and policy design.

Theme 2: Support big data analytics and research. Implement new data techniques suitable to the digital era:

• Coordinate and implement quantitative and qualitative impact measurement and research of digital finance and economy interventions on SDG outcomes such as financial inclusion, resilience, empowerment etc.
• Support in Data curation, maintain, acquire and mine datasets of remittance and financial service providers;
• Support coordination with data mining firms to facilitate and set up data lakes, set up data pipelines using open APIs and other data sharing methods.
• Experiment with social media listening, web data scrapping and sentiment analysis tools using social media.
• Support in data treatment techniques and research methodologies around SDG outcome measurement suitable for digital finance sector such as big data, transaction data analytics, test and learn, human centric design, customer journeys, lean data surveys, qualitative impact protocols
• Document research methodologies for internal learning and replicability and to contribute state-of- the-art research and publications that help advance the remittance literature and best practices.
• Devise statistical credit models for customers and agents in the remittances sector.
• Support in devising estimation models for informal remittances
• Support the Migrant Money Data Collaborative, which aims to gather customer, product, institution, and market data on remittances for policy and innovation insights.
• Work with the data engineering consulting firm; advise on the design and implementation of the data management system and harmonization pipeline to ensure internal system requirements are met.
• Present research findings to the ecosystem at conferences and meetings.

Theme 3: Engage in technical support to public and private partners in policy and product development and data analytics and usage:

• Coordinate and conduct data mapping exercises and assessments with financial institutions, including remittance services providers, FinTechs, and other providers.
• Coordinate and conduct technical support in human-centric product design to Remittance and Financial Service Providers with regard to data treatment and usage and product development.
• Coordinate and conduct capacity building for programme partners on data analytics and usage.
• Devise statistical credit models for customers and agents in the remittances sector.

Theme 4: Knowledge Management and Learning:

• Conduct literature review and keep abreast of insights on remittance and migration and informal remittances.
• Support in developing content for academic publications.
• Support in content development for knowledge products, including working papers, dashboards, blogs, website materials, presentations, etc. Review and edit working papers, research, and communications materials;
• Support data and research collaboratives to enhance (digital) remittances and linked financial inclusion, with Universities, the UN and other research institutions to promote UNCDF’s work.
• Use insights to support overall program development to inform the UNCDF digital strategy.

Competencies

Required Skills and Experience

1. Minimum Qualifications of the Successful IPSA