The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is a global organization with 17,000 staff working in approximately 170 offices globally towards supporting governments in developing strong policies, institutions and partnerships to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals. UNDP's policy work carried out at HQ, Regional and Country Office levels, forms a contiguous spectrum of deep local knowledge to cutting-edge global perspectives and advocacy. In this context, UNDP invests in the Global Policy Network (GPN), a network of field-based and global technical expertise across a wide range of knowledge domains and in support of the signature solutions and organizational capabilities envisioned in the Strategic Plan. Within the GPN, the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support (BPPS) has the responsibility for developing all relevant policy and guidance to support the results of UNDP's Strategic Plan.

Sustainable Finance Sector Hub

In order to streamline its financial and investment engagement, UNDP launched the Sustainable Finance Hub, a finance and innovation platform, that draws on a critical mass of UNDP expertise, initiatives, and partnerships to support the mobilization and leveraging of resources for the SDGs and lead the implementation of the new UNDP private sector strategy and other initiatives. The Hub is an integral part of both the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support (BPPS) and the Bureau of External Relations and Advocacy (BERA), as well as part of the GPN.  The Hub serves as a connector, broker, and global coordinator among internal and external actors, and curates and manages UNDP’s catalogue of service offers on SDG financing to governments, investors, and companies, via the COs, to significantly enhance the scale. The Sustainable Finance Hub team in Geneva works across a range of activities relevant to financing and investment for the SDGs, with strong links to financial, private and institutional sectors across Europe. In particular, it leads on UNDP’s work in insurance and risk financing while delivering initiatives that target the ecosystems of investment actors across Europe.

Insurance and Risk Finance Facility (IRFF)

The collaboration between the insurance industry and the development sector has grown significantly over the last five years. Key initiatives, such as the Insurance Development Forum, InsuResilience Global Partnership and the Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance, have evolved into significant policy and standard setting partnerships, bringing together countries, the development sector, and the private and mutual/cooperative sectors of industry. Increasingly, these partnerships are moving beyond policy to programming, with a strong focus on not only delivering insurance and risk financing solutions to countries and communities, but also on long-term transformational change of insurance markets.

IRFF is UNDP’s flagship initiative on insurance and risk finance for supporting UNDP Country Offices and country partners worldwide, within the Sustainable Finance Hub. This work covers a range of critical areas where insurance and risk transfer solutions and collaboration with the industry can add significantly to achieving and delivering on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Covering inclusive insurance, sovereign risk financing, insurance investments, natural capital, health, SME development and more, UNDP will work towards developing and delivering insurance solutions together with countries and communities, as well as collaborating with partners to transform insurance markets through enhancing legislation, regulation and institutional capacity.

IRFF will deliver innovative protection solutions in 50 developing countries by 2025. Currently, the Facility is operational in 20 countries. We support the development of innovative insurance products and services that are aimed towards vulnerable people and communities while also investing in the long-term transformation of insurance markets. We are working closely with industry partners to deliver policy advice, guidance, tools, methodologies, and networks that boost country and community resilience towards socio-economic, health, climate, and other shocks. The Facility’s work also goes beyond insurance supply and demand. It examines legislations, regulatory and institutional capacity development, and invests in advocacy, training and education.

IRFF Workstreams

The Facility’s activities fall under different thematic areas as elaborated below.

Integrating Insurance into Development: The Facility will work with government and industry to comprehensively integrate insurance and risk-financing into the way countries financially manage their risks and build long-term financial resilience, with a focus on integrating modelling and analysis of the impacts shock and risk on development and development finance. This scope of the Facility’s work includes:

1. Integration of Insurance and Risk Financing into Policy and Development Frameworks (e.g., INFF, NAPs and NDCs)
2. Supporting Supervision and Regulation Development

Inclusive Insurance:  The Facility is creating effective partnerships with insurers at all levels to develop innovative insurance products and distribution solutions designed specifically to meet the needs of underserved populations and contribute to the InsuResilience Vision 2025 target of covering 150 million vulnerable beneficiaries by 2025. This scope of the Facility’s work includes:

1. Training of governments, the insurance industry and UNDP partners on inclusive insurance
2. Technical support to scale up and improve inclusive insurance solutions including strategic management and business modelling, market research, product design, operation and process design, social marketing, technology and digital integration
3. Insurance financial education and consumer protection
4. Big data and artificial intelligence (AI) to support inclusive insurance

Sovereign Risk Finance: The Facility is partnering with industry and building institutional capacity and regulatory environments that are critical to limiting the impact of disasters on people’s lives and to help countries' reach their development goals. This scope of the Facility’s work includes:

1. Training of government and UNDP partners on Risk Financing
2. Development of country risk profiles
3. Development of national/subnational Risk Financing and Insurance strategies
4. Public financial management of climate risks/disasters
5. Technical support to scale up and improve Sovereign Risk solutions

Natural Capital Insurance: The Facility is working with countries and communities to develop risk transfer solutions for natural capital protecting which can benefit people and the planet. This include ways in which natural capital can be protected to support economy, and livelihoods, engaging in advocacy and risk awareness, supporting the integration of natural capital into country development plans, and helping to improve associated legislative and regulatory frameworks. This scope of the Facility’s work includes:

1. Knowledge products and specialized research
2. Product development and risk transfer solutions
3. Policy advocacy and development of enabling environment
4. Technical assistance and capacity building

Insurance & Investment: The Facility is exploring opportunities for insurance to de-risk and incentivize resilient investment through innovative financing structures such as insurance-linked loan packages and resilience bonds. The Facility is also developing a pipeline of SDG-aligned insurance and investment opportunities in developing countries that meet the investment standards of insurers that are developed in collaboration with industry stakeholders. An equally important part of this work is advocating for improved policies and regulatory treatment of infrastructure investment by insurers at the local and international level.

Agricultural Insurance: The Facility is also supporting the development of climate risk insurance solutions for smallholder farmers.  This scope of the Facility’s work includes:

1. Develop public policies on agricultural insurance
2. Build capacity and support public institutions to develop and implement climate risk insurance programmes for smallholders
3. Technical support to scale up and improve inclusive insurance solutions including strategic management and business modelling, market research, product design, operation and process design, social marketing, technology, and digital integration

Takaful (Islamic alternative to insurance): The Facility is also supporting the creation of enabling environment and expanding affordable access to Takaful for vulnerable and fragile populations.  This involves providing them with access to risk transfer solutions that are in-line with the socio-cultural and religious beliefs and to help protect against risks to their property, agriculture, livestock, health, and livelihoods.  This helps in providing respite to public funding resources by sharing the risks through private sector Takaful operators (companies).  This scope of the Facility’s work includes:

1. Development of enabling environments for Takaful solutions
2. Product development
3. Trainings and capacity building
4. Developing knowledge products and specialized research

Gender and Insurance/Risk Finance: The Facility adopts a gender lens to increase access to information and choice of solutions to strengthen vulnerable populations’ resilience to disaster. Gender sensitive approaches can create positive opportunities for greater action across all the pillars of the facility’s work.  This scope of the Facility’s work includes:

1. Review entire project cycle and activities to identify gaps (if any) and explore opportunities for a strengthened gender advanced approach;

1. Enabling integrated gender focus in all phases of the programme to ensure the cross-cutting nature of gender is acted upon.

Risk Modelling:  The Facility is working to strengthen risk understanding and risk modelling capabilities. This is a component part of each country work plan which includes a capacity building module on risk modelling for government stakeholders and their development planning. Additionally, the Facility is working with its partner the Insurance Development Forum on the roll out of the Global Risk Modelling Alliance (GRMA). Interested governments are supported by UNDP to apply for the GRMA for technical and financial resources to establish an open-source risk model to support government decision-making and the development of risk finance and insurance solutions.

More information on the Insurance and Risk Finance Facility is available at https://irff.undp.org/.

The main responsibility will be to provide expert assistance to country offices, government agencies and other partners in one of the thematic areas listed above. Experts will need to demonstrate extensive professional experience in the selected area. The rostered experts can be deployed on demand as individual contractors for short-term assignments on a national, regional or international level.  Specific terms of reference with assignment specific responsibilities and deliverables will be developed for each assignment. Functional areas of expertise can typically be one of the below:

1. Technical Assistance
2. Advocacy
3. Institutional Development
4. Legal and Regulatory Frameworks
5. Capacity Building
6. Product Development
7. Research and Evidence

Responsibilities/Tasks

The representative set of duties and responsibilities listed below is not exhaustive, and the terms of reference of each assignment will dictate the exact scope of the work. Key areas of support and activities will include:

• Support to development of action plans and support to regulators to improve insurance regulations towards inclusiveness
• Conduct trainings for UNDP CO and government partners on understanding and articulating risk - strengthening measuring and modelling of risk to inform decision making and disaster finance planning
• Build technical capacity on risk financing - review of current governance/institutional arrangements for risk-financing and capacity development work to strengthen institutional capacity, systems and processes
• Develop government capacity, systems and practices for the management of resources generated by insurance and risk financing, including contingency planning. 
• Review legal and strategic frameworks governing the public financial management of climate and disaster risk, offer recommendations and potential technical assistance to enhance PFM in light of risk financing.
• Develop national and/or subnational disaster risk finance and insurance strategy, across key assets and sectors, and for the protection of population groups (as appropriate dependent on existing work). This includes development of an action plan on how to tackle risk through a layered approach, including recommendations of the financial options open to government.
• Develop country risk profiles identifying key risks, frequency and magnitude of impact (option for a more comprehensive risk profile to be developed depending on available resources)
• Conduct trainings for governments and partners on the integration of risk financing into the INFF Development Financing programme (including working with the Ministry of Finance to integrate risk modelling and analytics into development financing)
• Lead training initiatives in partnership with national insurance training organizations to strengthen the capacity of national insurance players around inclusive insurance
• Support the implementation of insurance programmes (Including but not exclusive for agriculture, health microinsurance, insurance for SMEs, etc) in elements like strategic management, market research, process optimization, digitalization and technology integration, product design, distribution, marketing and communications, etc.

Experts can be deployed for/to the following regions or countries:

Each assignment will dictate the exact outputs and deliverables. The list below is a representation of outputs and deliverables that may be expected:

• Expert advisory services
• Strategic, policy and research documents
• Support to the development of inclusive insurance initiatives
• Policy, legal and regulatory documents
• Supervisory processes and documents developed
• Training sessions in workshops
• Facilitate and implement training of trainers (ToT) processes

The application package containing the following (to be uploaded as one file):

• Completed Questionnaire form (Annexure 1- to be downloaded via  https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Firff.undp.org%2Fcall%2Fcall-applications-irff-roster&data=05%7C01%7Cjayati.das%40undp.org%7C301c6395a26746dc01bf08dacbd8e9b5%7Cb3e5db5e2944483799f57488ace54319%7C0%7C0%7C638046429729714706%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=OinDR7pXusd%2F3T%2FsMlezLZ7qJZaLxx%2BsO142Kn0d4xM%3D&reserved=0
  indicating how the candidate fulfils the stated requirements;
• Please indicate the language(s) for which you are applying (English/ French/ Spanish/ Arabic/ Portuguese/Russian) in the space given in the thematic area form.
• Comprehensive CV indicating all past experience from similar projects and specifying when the assignments were undertaken (from/to), as well as the email and telephone contacts of at least three (3) professional references.

 Note:

• Convert the completed questionnaire and CV into PDF and merge them into a single document as the system allows uploading of only one document.

• Please also note that applications must be submitted in English language irrespective of the language(s) you are applying for.
• Due to the large number of applications, we receive, we are able to inform only the successful candidates about the outcome or status of the selection process.

Shortlisted candidates (ONLY) will be requested to submit a Financial Proposal.

• The financial proposal should specify an all-inclusive daily fee (based on a 7-hour working day - lunch time is not included).
• This daily professional fee is exclusive of travel, accommodation and other subsistence costs incurred during missions. UNDP will arrange for travel by purchasing the return ticket; a standard DSA rate (daily sustenance) will be paid to the expert who in turn will arrange for their own accommodation, local travel and food.

• Experts will be responsible for their own IT equipment, mobile phones, and travel insurance and medical insurance.
• If the candidate is employed by an organization/company/institution, and he/she expects his/her employer to charge a management fee in the process of releasing him/her to UNDP under a Reimbursable Loan Agreement (RLA), the candidate must indicate at this point, and ensure that all such costs are duly incorporated in the financial proposal submitted to UNDP.

The Financial Proposal is to be submitted as per the instruction in the separate email that will be sent ONLY to shortlisted candidates

Evaluations will be as follows:

Stage 1 - Desk review

Candidates obtaining a minimum of 70 points (with minimum 30 points minimum under the required qualification) will be invited for an interview

Stage 2 - Interview

Interview will carry 40 points. Candidates who obtain a minimum of 30 points in the interview will be requested to submit a financial proposal and are invited to be included to the Roster.

Stage 3 – Reasonableness of Financial Offer

While no financial evaluation will be done for candidates at this stage, the reasonableness of the quoted daily professional fees shall be assessed based on the UN rate. If the proposed daily rate is too high and a mutually acceptable rate cannot be agreed upon, UNDP will not be able to include the candidate into the roster.

Individuals who will be considered technically qualified, will be offered to be placed on the roster. When opportunities arise, experts on the roster will be contacted for availability and asked to submit a financial proposal for the assignments fitting their thematic area. The daily professional fee quoted by each candidate during the application stage will be the maximum fee to be quoted when a call is sent to the roster before a IRFF mission.

Upon selection, an Individual Contract (IC) or Reimbursable Loan Agreements (RLA) will then be awarded for the assignment. This will have a specific Terms of Reference, including the time frame.

NOTE:

• All applicants are required to follow the rules and regulations pertaining to serving official’s participation in programmes of multilateral organisations.
• Once selected for the Roster, the experts have the responsibility of informing UNDP when their circumstances change (e.g. when he/she takes up a new role particularly a position which could create a potential conflict of interest).

Payment modality

• Payments to the Individual Contractors will be made following certification by the UNDP that the services contracted for have been performed satisfactorily and on time.