Background

UNCDF:

UNCDF is the UN’s capital investment agency for the world’s least developed countries. It creates new opportunities for poor people and their communities by increasing access to microfinance 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 provides seed capital – grants and loans – and technical support to help microfinance institutions reach more poor households and small businesses, and local governments finance the capital investments – water systems, feeder roads, schools, irrigation schemes – that will improve poor peoples’ lives.

UNCDF works to enlarge peoples’ choices: it believes that poor people and communities should take decisions about their own development.  Its programmes help to empower women – over 50% of the clients of UNCDF-supported microfinance institutions are women – and its expertise in microfinance and local development is shaping new responses to food insecurity, climate change and other challenges.  UNCDF works in challenging environments – remote rural areas, countries emerging from conflict – and paves the way for others to follow. Its programmes are designed to catalyze larger investment flows from the private sector, development partners and national governments, for significant impact on the Millennium Development Goals, especially Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger, Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women, and Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability.

Despite the rapid growth of the microfinance industry in the past ten years, it is estimated that between two and three billion people still lack access to a broad range of financial products and services on a sustainable basis. The situation is particularly dire in the LDCs, where often more than 90 per cent of the population is denied access to financial services from the formal financial system. UNCDF focuses its strategy on Financial inclusion, which is universal access, at a reasonable cost, to a wide range of financial services, provided by a variety of sound and sustainable institutions. The range of financial services includes savings, short and long-term credit, leasing and factoring, mortgages, insurance, pensions, payments, local money transfers and international remittances.

Mobile Money for the Poor (MM4P):

In July 2014, MM4P secured a partnership with the MasterCard Foundation (MCF) for the roll out MM4P activities in three additional countries in sub-Saharan Africa for a period of five years (2014 to 2019), including Francophone (Benin, Senegal) and Anglophone (Zambia) Africa.  The MCF agreement supposes a significant increase of workload for MM4P especially on the Learning Agenda (see attached).  The learning agenda includes four areas relevant to digital finance, namely: customer adoptions; agents; high volume payments; and partnerships for products or delivery.  In addition, UNCDF is conducting an impact study in 2017 and 2019.

The focus of the Learning Agenda in 2015 and 2016 was to conduct market research on customer adoption, agents and payments while UNCDF got established in each of the new countries as well as several of MM4P’s other countries, particularly Uganda and Nepal. At the same time UNCDF would like to document some of its initial lessons learned using a combination its own research, external sources and its on-going project portfolio.

Duties and Responsibilities

Objectives of the assignment:

• Provide expert input on MM4P research projects, current and planned, including preliminary, draft and final research documents prepared by MM4P research partners resulting in stronger methodologies, survey work and research outputs.
• Provide expert advice to MM4P team on how to construct and extract learning through agreements with MM4P partners to ensure lessons are extracted and shared with MM4P, its research partners and other key stakeholders. 
• Write up summaries of research pieces and of project reports in various formats for better dissemination of findings.
• Write case studies based on country experiences with support to providers and regulators.
• Conduct research reviews and identify knowledge gaps.
• Support the production of video interviews to complement case studies, by drafting interview guidelines and producing the video.

Scope of work and deliverables:

1. Assist in implementing the Global Learning Agenda

• Conduct a review of the research that has been conducted related to the global learning agenda questions.
• Review project descriptions for larger and / or innovative projects and provide input on how to extract learnings from projects.
• Stay up to speed with and review research or project publications related to the global learning questions on an ongoing basis.
• Provide support to the MM4P in implementing the learning agenda across countries, including 6 virtual meetings and 3 face to face meetings over 12 months.

Expected Level of Effort:  35 days

2. Research synthesis and technical writing

• Conduct country-level research reviews: provide a synthesis of existing research, identify knowledge gaps, and formulate next steps to obtain the insights.
• Write briefing notes and or research highlights to synthesise reports by research partners to support the communication and dissemination of the research.
• Ghost write blogs/articles on demand with country technical team on subjects related to projects and learning agenda.
• Synthesize country diagnostics and roadmaps to DFS and financial inclusion.
• Write case study on experience with regulation and providers, and agro value chain, and HCD.

Expected Level of Effort:  45 days

3. Other tasks

• Respond to requests for assistance or expert review for issues requiring less than 1 day.
• Participate in MM4P events as requested by the Knowledge Management Associate.

Expected Level of Effort:  20 days

Competencies

Professional:

• Takes on innovation and new approaches and fosters innovation in others;
• Creates an environment that fosters innovation and innovative thinking;
• Conceptualizes more effective approaches to programme development and implementation and to mobilizing and using resources.

Management/Client Orientation:

• Anticipates constraints in the delivery of services and identifies solutions or alternatives;
• Proactively identifies, develops and discusses solutions for internal and external clients, and persuades management to undertake new projects or services;
• Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities, and resolve problems;
• Focus on impact and results for clients and stakeholders;
• Builds trust in interactions with others, facilitates partnerships;
• Approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude and responds positively to feedback;
• Committed to team work, working with other stakeholders.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• A Masters’ degree in finance, economics, international development, public/business administration, social sciences, or related discipline or the equivalent experience.

Experience: 

• A minimum of five years of experience in projects with financial inclusion as a focus or part is mandatory;
• Experience in directly implementing research projects, preferably with a focus on financial inclusion is mandatory;
• Experience publishing articles, blogs or other materials is mandatory;
• Excellent technical writing skills and presentation skills is mandatory;
• Working knowledge of concepts in digital financial inclusion and preferably knowledge and exposure to branchless banking, mobile phone banking, or other efforts using technology to reach rural and poor populations is desirable but not mandatory.
• Experience working with UNCDF or a similar type organization is desired. 

Language:

• Fluency in English.
• Fluency in French is a plus.

Timeline, duration of assignment, duty station and expected places of travel:

• Timeline: 01 December 2017 – 1 December 2018.
• Locations: Primarily off-site and participation in the MM4P team meeting (Brussels or other site to be determined), as necessary.
• Total Number of Working Days for Assignment: 100 working days.

Travel:

• Consultants will not quote travel in the financial proposal;
• Travel will be required during this assignment and payment of travel costs including tickets, lodging and terminal expenses will be compensated according to UN polices.

Provision of Monitoring, Progress Controls & Payments:

Monitoring of progress shall be measured both according to the activities of the consultant and final deliverables. In addition: 

• The consultant will organize bi-weekly debriefing calls on progress made.
• The consultant must secure approval from UNCDF´s in-country digital financial services expert prior to deployment of staff and trips. 
• The consultant will provide brief minutes of all meetings and a list of persons met (or copy of business cards), including:  date, name, organization, title, e-mail address.
• The consultant will conduct briefings to the MM4P team and a brief TOR prior to departure of on-site missions upon request of UNCDF. 

The consultant will organize a progress calls with MM4P and the partner at the end of the mission.

The primary contact for reporting for this TOR shall be the MM4P shall be UNCDF´s Knowledge Management Associate (karima.wardak@uncdf.org) and secondary will be UNCDFs Results Measurement Analysts (anne.duijnhouwer@uncdf.org). 

• Payment will be made on periodical basis in accordance with number of days worked and upon satisfactorily achieved deliverables. All payments are subject to the clearance and approval of the direct supervisor.
•  Final payment shall require a signed performance evaluation of the consultant.

Application:

Applications will be rated on both technical and financial submissions.  The best proposal that will be awarded the contract shall be selected through the following method:

Highest rated proposal using the combined scoring method, which assigns the weight distribution between the technical and financial proposals as set out in the RFP.  The weight distribution shall be 70% technical and 30% financial.

All applications must contain the following information:

• Cover letter with a summary statement of competencies in relation to the TOR;
• Earliest availability and proposed schedule for consultancy;
• Examples of previous research pieces and articles published;
• Completed and signed P11 - Personal History Form with names and current contacts of 3 referees (available from http://sas.undp.org/documents/p11_personal_history_form.doc).

Signed financial proposal for the full months assignment outlining:

• Total professional fee;
• Other professional expenses (such as insurance, taxes, etc.);

The financial proposal form is available at http://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_file.cfm?doc_id=29916)

Evaluation:

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodology:

• Preliminary Evaluation - Step I: Screening
• Technical Evaluation Weight - 70% x (Step II: Shortlisting (20 points), Step III: Desk Review (80 points) = 100 Points)
• Financial Evaluation Weight - 30% = Step IV.

Step I: Screening:

Applications will be screened and only applicants meeting the following minimum criteria (listed under education and experience) and providing at least 3 research pieces and 3 articles examples they authored will progress to the pool for shortlisting.

Step II: Shortlisting by Desk Review:

UNCDF will conduct a desk review to produce a shortlist of candidates and technically evaluate them.

As applicable, only the first top 3 ranked applicants achieving 70% of the points at this stage shall be considered for a desk review.

Step III: Desk Review:

A competency-based desk review shall be conducted for the candidates. The maximum score for the desk review is 80 points.

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 70% on the total of Step II (20 points) + Step III (80 points) will be considered as technically qualified and will be reviewed further for financial evaluation.

Step IV: Financial Evaluation:

The following formula will be used to evaluate financial proposal:

Lowest priced proposal/price of the proposal being evaluated x 30%.

Award Criteria:

The contact shall be awarded to the best applicant whose offer have been evaluated and determined as: responsive/compliant/acceptable and having received the highest combined weight (technical proposal & Desk Review) 70% + financial 30%= 100%.

Please note that UNCDF cannot guarantee residence permits or visa´s for consultants. Consultants are responsible for securing their work documentation. In the case of national consultants, applicants that are not nationals of the duty station requested will have to prove their residence status. 

Any individual employed by a company or institution who would like to submit an offer in response to a Procurement Notice for IC must do so in their individual capacity (providing a CV so that their qualifications may be judged accordingly). Please not that in such case the company institution will be asked to issue an RLA: http://www.undp.org/content/dam/vietnam/docs/Legalframework/Reimbursable%20Loan%20Agreement.doc.  

Women candidates or women-owned businesses are strongly encouraged to apply.

(Reimbursable Loan Agreement (RLA): A legal instrument between UNCDF and a Company/institution, according to which, the latter makes available the services of an individual delivering time-bound and quantifiable outputs that are directly linked to payments. An RLA is governed by the provisions of this policy.)