Background

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.

Mobile Money for the Poor (MM4P)

Mobile Money for the Poor (MM4P) is a global thematic initiative to address the opportunities and challenges of implementing branchless banking and mobile money in challenging markets in Africa and Asia.  MM4P’s long-term mission is to help low-income and rural households in LDCs increase their financial security through appropriate, affordable and secure means to receive, manage and save money through these “digital financial services” (DFS). DFS refers to a range of formal financial services accessible via digital channels, such as mobile money and agency banking, as opposed to traditional financial services accessed through physically visited at a bank branch. UNCDF is currently implementing this in eight countries (Benin, Laos, Nepal, Malawi, Myanmar, Senegal, Uganda and Zambia).

While East Africa has experienced rapid gains in DFS access and usage, the rest of the continent suffers from widespread financial exclusion. The 2017 Global Findex finds that only 42.6% of adults in all of Sub Saharan Africa own a formal financial account, and of those approximately 65% have used an account at least once last year, indicating that at least 416M adults in Sub Saharan Africa are either unbanked or underbanked. While widespread financial exclusion across SSA stems from a range of commercial, regulatory, and infrastructure barriers, we believe the two most critical barriers are:

1. Lack of shared DFS infrastructure: The lack of shared DFS infrastructure (including shared payments and ID systems) enables monopolistic control over core pieces of infrastructure, drives up operational costs for each individual provider (for fraud management, customer onboarding, etc.), inhibits market entry, and slows product innovation.  The African Development Bank and World Bank both plan to ramp-up their investment in building shared DFS infrastructure across Africa. Hence, we hope to see rapid improvements in African DFS infrastructure in the coming years.
2. Lack of enabling policies and regulations:  While we expect to see solid improvements in shared DFS infrastructure across Africa, most African LDCs still suffer from key regulatory constraints, including licensing requirements which prevent non-banks from offering payments and deposit accounts, restrictive agent regulations which prevent providers from fully leveraging their existing distribution networks, and KYC requirements which make it difficult for poor people to access DFS systems. For example, a brief review of the enabling regulatory environment for DFS across Africa revealed that the following countries severely restrict the ability of non-banks (including MNOs) to offer DFS:

What is slowing the adoption of sound DFS regulatory frameworks? A key factor slowing the adoption of enabling DFS regulations across SSA is the lack of direct advisory support to African LDCs to build this regulatory capacity and propagate replicable processes for proportionate regulations that promote competitive, accessible, use of digital financial services. Over the past several years there has been a concerted global effort to provide greater clarity on the policy and regulatory requirements for DFS. Research from CGAP and the Center for Financial Regulation and Inclusion (CENFRI) have curated readily available data and information designed to inform the policy making process. The African Development Bank and World Bank Group have, respectively, pushed the agenda for infrastructure development and national strategies to promote inclusive DFS. Organisations such as the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) and Financial Sector Deepening- Africa (FSDA) have targeted many African LDCs with discrete training, convenings, and technical workshops, but lack either sustained presence or adequate capacity to drive regulatory reforms and alignment to completion.

Despite these efforts to formulate policy and regulatory recommendations, there remains a gap in the capacity of LDC governments to translate these recommendations into national DFS policy and regulatory frameworks. The reasons for this include a narrow focus of TA resources on policy and regulatory actors in a few large countries with fast-growing DFS markets (e.g. Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Tanzania), lack of sustained TA at the local level to build capacity and support champions of policy reform, and lack of coordination among global policy and regulatory actors.

UNCDF aims to address these regulatory and policy gaps by applying its local presence, convening power, technical assets, and close partnership with local and global partners to drive policy and regulatory change in LDCs across SSA. UNCDF has worked with regulators and policy makers as a trusted in over 40 markets, focused specifically on enabling regulations, policy, and supervision. In the last decade UNCDF has focused specifically on the role that digital technologies play in accelerating the use of financial services by low income people.  Financial sector policymakers and regulators have proven to be natural partners who share a common goal to leverage technology to enable sustainable economic development and inclusive markets.

In its role as a technical assistance provider and neutral broker, UNCDF leverages the global body of knowledge and existing resources and facilitates access to them by policymakers and regulators. UNCDF works closely with global and national partners (both public and private) to build capacity and facilitate solutions to key market constraints and support government to engage with the industry so public policy and market objectives align at the local and regional level to achieve the following objectives:

• Enable a competitive and inclusive DFS ecosystem;
• Protect consumers and the financial system;
• Increase government commitment to DFS as an economic development enabler;
• Create foundations for regional finance and trade harmonization; and
• Deepen capacity and familiarization with DFS models and risk management tools.

UNCDF is looking for a Policy Specialist to contribute to its digital ecosystem policy and regulatory agenda, directly supporting the UNCDF global network with sharp analysis and management of critical resource databases, which together enable ready technical assistance to policymakers and regulators in emerging markets.

Duties and Responsibilities

The main deliverables for this consultancy are listed below. The table indicates the activity prioritization, the respective outputs, and corresponding payment schedule.

• Conduct policy and market benchmarking of 15 African LDCs to determine regulatory gaps and market potential for digital finance.
• Design and develop a centralized “Law Library”, accessible to the UNCDF global network
• Draft development partner engagement and coordination plan, taking into account the respective roles and mandates of the organizations. Example, World Bank, African Development Bank, CGAP, GSMA, AFI, etc.

Competencies

• Demonstrate corporate knowledge and sound judgment;
• Self-development, initiative-taking;
• Acting as a team player, facilitating team work, and managing conflict;
• Facilitating and encouraging open communication in the team, communicating effectively;
• Creates networks, manages relationships and promotes initiatives with partner organizations;
• Deep understanding of financial inclusion and role of policy to advance new business models
• Learning and sharing knowledge and encourage the learning of others;
• Effective spokesperson, engaging stakeholders and groupings, both Central bank, government ministers and private sector senior corporate leaders, to advance the development of data reporting system
• Ability to do desk Research and Policy Analysis of financial service laws and regulation relevant to digital financial services
• Excellent presentation and representation skills in multicultural contexts;
• Ability to translate complex technical ideas to a non-technical audience, verbally and in writing.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• A Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in public policy, economics or law is required;

Experience:

• A minimum of two (2) years dedicated experience working for financial service regulator or policymaking body;
• Experience in working at high levels of government;
• Working knowledge of current developments including innovative data collection and reporting methods essential;
• Functional understanding of payment systems, banking, and other retail financial services
• Experience scanning global resource and knowledge base maintaining database of resources to for access by global network
• Experience providing direct policy advice and support to executive leaders and functional teams
• Experience working in emerging markets in Africa or Asia;
• Excellent attention to detail, a proactive approach to achieving key results, and a high level of thoroughness in a complex multitasking and matrix management environment;
• Experience in project management and program management;
• Excellent written and oral communications skills;
• Willingness to travel up to 33% on average.

Any of the following will be considered a plus:

• Understanding of FinTech and the technologies used by financial service providers;
• Exposure to the financial/tech/telco industries in Africa or other emerging markets;
• Experience with monitoring and evaluation and/or cost-effectiveness studies;
• Professional familiarity with different cultures and languages;
• Experience developing qualitative research tools.

Language:

• Excellent written and oral English is mandatory.
• Proficiency in French is not required but a considerable advantage for this role.

Timeline, total number of working days, duty station:

• Timeline: 15 August 2018 – 15 January 2019;
• Total Number of Working Days for Assignment: 120.
• Duty station: Brussels, Belgium.

Travel:

Extensive travel is expected with this role. All travel costs will be covered directly by UNCDF.

Payment of travel costs including tickets, lodging and terminal expenses should be agreed upon, between the respective business unit and Individual Consultant, prior to travel and will be reimbursed.

Please note that UNCDF cannot guarantee residence permits or visas 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.  

Please note that consultants residing in the duty station will not be compensated for living expenses.

Provision of Monitoring, Progress Controls & Payments:

• The primary contact for reporting for this TOR shall be the UNCDF MM4P Ecosystem Specialist;
• Payment will be made at the end of each phase against satisfactorily achieved deliverables. All payments are subject to the clearance and approval of the MM4P Ecosystem Specialist.
• Final payment shall require a signed performance evaluation of the consultant.

Application process:

Interested individuals must submit the documents mentioned below as proposals in order to demonstrate their qualifications (Note: the system does not allow multiple uploads of documents. Applicants must make sure to upload all documents in one PDF file).

All applications must contain the following information:

• Cover letter with a summary statement of competencies in relation to the Terms of Reference (TOR);
• Earliest availability and proposed schedule for consultancy;
• Curriculum Vitae;
• 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 assignment outlining: All-inclusive fee (including professional fees and other professional expenses, such as insurance, taxes, etc.), and relocation travel costs (e.g. daily subsistence allowance (DSA) and the cost of one return ticket to Brussels, Belgium from place of origin). Available at http://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_file.cfm?doc_id=29916). The consultant’s hosting is provided by UNCDF, therefore no DSA or living allowance is to be quoted in the financial proposal.

Incomplete applications will not be considered. Please make sure you have provided all requested materials. 

Selection process: 

Step I: Screening: Applications will be screened and only applicants meeting the minimum criteria will progress to the pool for shortlisting.

Step II: Technical Evaluation

Shortlisting (20 points): UNCDF will produce a shortlist of candidates and technically evaluate candidates as per experience requirements in the Terms of Reference. As applicable, only the first top 3 ranked applicants shall be considered for an interview. Shortlisted candidates will be asked to submit an example of their writing and analysis.

Interview (80 points): An interview shall be conducted for the top 3 shortlisted candidates. The interview will include a 10 min presentation on a topic related to policy and regulation of digital finance. The details of the presentation requirements will be shared on notification of shortlisting.

Step III: Financial Evaluation: Only candidates with scores above 70% of the technical evaluation (70 Points or above) will be considered. 

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 applicant whose offer have been evaluated and determined as:

Responsive/compliant/acceptable; and Having received the highest combined weight (technical scores) 70% + financial 30%= 100%.

Both individual consultants and individual employed by a company or institution are welcome to apply. 

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