Antecedentes

UN Women grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace, and security. Placing women’s rights at the center of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates the United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts and builds effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

UN Women Egypt Strategic Plan (2018-2022) focuses on promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment in line with the 2014 Egyptian Constitution and relevant international norms and standards. Egypt’s 2018-2022 UN Partnership Development Framework (UNPDF) considers that ‘dealing with issues of women’s social and economic empowerment must be at the forefront of the UN’s support in the economic and social arenas. The Egyptian National Women’s Strategy (NWS) 2030 focuses on four pillars: (a) women’s leadership and political participation; (b) women’s economic empowerment; (c) women’s social empowerment and (d) protection of women. ‘Changing prevailing cultural norms’ and ‘legislative change’ are included as cross-cutting enablers.

Financial inclusion has been identified as a valuable tool in fostering women’s economic empowerment, increasing their capacity to face risk and unexpected expenses and participate in sustainable economic growth. Financial inclusion relates to people (especially low income), households’ and MSMEs’ access to a full range of useful and affordable quality financial products and services that meet their needs – such as accounts, savings, payments and transfers, credit, and insurance and others - in a responsible and sustainable manner, within a legal and regulatory environment conducive to their development, by a range of formal service providers.

Financial inclusion is specifically important for women and girls in the sense that it can increase their empowerment and improve gender equality in a number of ways. Firstly, by having access to resources and tools, women’s bargaining power within households will increase and in turn upsurge their influence and ability of decision making. Secondly, financial inclusion can support women to sustain their own income, control assets outside the household, and have contributed to productive activities. Thirdly, financial inclusion can reduce women’s vulnerability and dependency on male family members by having access to financial opportunities to smooth consumption or meet unexpected expenses. Furthermore, women who are financially excluded lack access to basic financial services, which in turn has an impact on their access to household expenditures (for food, health, education, etc.) and expenditures for business. 

The current environment in Egypt holds huge potential for women’s financial inclusion. Egypt’s National Women’s Empowerment Strategy 2030 and its accompanying pillar on Women’s Economic Empowerment list women’s access to economic resources through increased access to financial services as an important objective. The CBE co-hosted the 9th Global Policy Forum of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI), held in September 2017. In his opening speech, President H.E. Abdel Fattah El Sisi emphasized the high-level political commitment for financial inclusion in the country, especially for women.  Financial inclusion has moved to the top of the development policy agenda and gained a great deal of traction. In September 2017, the Central Bank of Egypt and the National Council for Women signed a Memorandum of Understanding to work together to foster women’s financial inclusion in Egypt, with   SGs expansion as one of the key objectives of the MOU. These developments pave the way for programs to create financial inclusion of all in Egypt, especially rural women.

Although Egypt has made a huge leap in financial inclusion, most Egyptian women, especially rural women, do not use formal financial services and the majority of adults in the poorest communities do not deal with banks. Overall, Egypt has made massive strides to almost double the number of people with accounts in formal institutions, but the overall penetration is still relatively low (32.8%). Rural accounts outreach is lower (29% against 33% nationally). While the rate of formal account penetration among women has more than tripled between 2011 and 2017 (from 7% to 27%), it is still less than the rate among men (39% in 2017), and the gender gap has kept increasing (from 6 percentage points in 2011 to 12 in 2017).

Women who are financially excluded lack access to basic financial services, which in turn has an impact on their access to household expenditures (for food, health, education, etc.) and expenditures for business.  Many, therefore, depend on informal sources of finance, generally at unfairly high-interest rates. It is in this context that financial inclusion initiatives aimed at women and managed by women assume greater importance.

Under the supervision of the Operations Manager, and in collaboration with the Financial and Economic Inclusion programme team, the Finance Associate is responsible for the execution of a wide range of financial services and administrative processes for the Financial and Economic Inclusion programme, ensuring timeliness, efficiency and transparent use of financial resources and delivery of services in accordance with organizational financial rules, regulations, policies, procedures and approved allocations. The Finance Associate promotes a client-oriented approach consistent with UN Women rules and regulations, standard practices, and guidelines.

The Finance Associate works in close collaboration with the Programme and Operations Team as well as with the Operations and Programme teams in UN Women HQ for solving complex finance-related issues and information delivery.

Deberes y responsabilidades

Implement financial strategies, in full compliance of UN Women rules, regulations, policies, and recording and reporting systems

• Perform duties in full compliance with UN Women financial regulations and rules, policies and standard operating procedures, including internal controls;
• Review and verify financial transactions, activities, and documentation; taking corrective actions as needed and reporting any unusual activities;
• Monitor financial exceptions reports for unusual activities or transaction, investigate anomalies and report to the supervisor conclusions and/or present recommendations for actions/decisions;
• Draft reports on financial status, procedures, exchange rates, costs and expenditures;
• Follow-up on audit recommendations to monitor the implementation of corrective actions;
• Collect, verify and present information and data for use in the planning of financial resources and the formulation of financial & economic inclusion programme work plans, budgets, proposals on implementation arrangements and execution modalities;
• Provide assistance in the Annual Work Plan entry in Results Management System (RMS) as required.
• Provide advice and recommend solutions to a wide range of financial issues;
• Monitor the proper functioning of the financial resources management system for the financial & economic inclusion programme budgets and resources;
• Implement cost-saving and reduction strategies;

Prepare and administer the financial & economic inclusion Programme budgets in full compliance of UN Women rules, regulations, policies, and recording and reporting systems

• Formulate the budget, control allotments, monitor expenditures, and prepare revisions according to the needs;
• Track the appropriate and timely use of financial resources; 
• Prepare cost recovery documents or bills for the services provided by UN Women to other programmes or organizations;
• Create projects in Atlas, prepare budget revisions, revise project awards and status; and determine unutilized funds;
• Implement and maintain a control mechanism for the financial & economic inclusion programme through monitoring budgets preparation and modifications and budgetary status;
• Maintain internal expenditure control system;
• Undertake corrective actions on un-posted vouchers, including vouchers with budget check errors, match exceptions and unapproved vouchers. Respond to RO /HQ requests to resolve financial data issues;
• Prepare VAT reimbursements with adequate documentation support;
• Input data in Atlas and monitor status. Keep stakeholders and clients informed for timely action and/or decisions;
• Manage petty cash fund, cash impress level.

Provide finance support to the Programme and Operations team

• Review accounts receivables for the financial & economic inclusion programme and follow-up with project managers and finance section at regional office and/or headquarters on contributions, deposits creation in Atlas and their application to AR pending items;
• Prepare PO and non-PO vouchers for the financial & economic inclusion programme;
• Record and post transactions in Atlas, process payroll, travel claims, MPOs, and other entitlements;
• Monitor the setup of budgets in ATLAS to ensure they are in accordance with budgets agreed with donors and are input into ATLAS at the detailed Activity ID level;
• Monitor each month over-expenditure of budgets and follow up with Budget Owner;
• Monitor regularly transactions posted to the financial & economic inclusion programme ensuring actual expenditure has been recorded against the correct budget category and activity, take timely corrective actions as required;
• Monitor proper follow up of advances to implementing partners, review their financial reports together with project managers;
• Monitor the financial status and under the guidance of the Operations Manager implement control mechanisms for the financial & economic inclusion programme.
• Monitor and proper follow up of all the financial items in Month-end and Year-end closure instructions status and under the guidance of the Operations Manager, take corrective actions as required
• Keep stakeholders and clients informed for timely actions/decisions and review status reports for quality control;
• Provide information inputs to financial reports for Regional Office, HQ Finance and stakeholders
• Associate revenue and expenditure in commitment control for the financial & economic inclusion programme.
• Provide inputs and take necessary actions to facilitate timely financial project closure;
• Support financial donor reporting by providing timely information and taking necessary actions as required by UN Women Virtual Global Service Centre for financial donor reporting;

Provide administrative support to Resource Mobilization

• Compile and process information from donors, CO, and programme team, as inputs to various databases and documents.
• Prepare drafts for cost-sharing agreements including conditions of contributions within resource mobilization efforts, adhering to standard agreements where possible. Follow up on contributions within the CO resource mobilization efforts.

Facilitate knowledge building and knowledge sharing

• Conduct training and/or helping organize training events and activities; as well as participate in training;
• Collect and compile lessons learned and best practices in financial management and services. Disseminate to clients and stakeholders as appropriate to build capacity and knowledge;
• Contribute to financial business operational practices and management innovations.

Competencias

Core Values:

• Respect for Diversity
• Integrity
• Professionalism

Core Competencies:

• Awareness and Sensitivity Regarding Gender Issues
• Accountability
• Creative Problem Solving
• Effective Communication
• Inclusive Collaboration
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Leading by Example

Please visit this link for more information on UN Women’s Core Values and Competencies: https://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/about%20us/employment/un-women-values-and-competencies-framework-en.pdf?la=en&vs=637

Functional Competencies

• Strong knowledge of financial rules and regulations and accounting principles;
• Strong knowledge and application skills of IT tools and understanding of management systems; 
• Strong knowledge of spreadsheet and database packages;
• Ability to provide input to business processes re-engineering, implementation of new systems;
• Ability to administer and execute financial and accounting processes and transactions.

Habilidades y experiencia requeridas

Education:

• Completion of secondary education is required.
• Specialized national or international certification in accounting and finance is an asset
• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting is an asset.
• Successful completion of UN Women Accounting and Finance Test is required.

Experience:

• At least 6 years of progressively responsible experience in finance;
• Experience in the usage of computers and office software packages (MS Word, Excel, etc) and spreadsheet and database packages, experience in handling of web-based management systems.
• Experience in the use of ATLAS is an asset.
• Experience with EU funded projects is an asset

Language Requirements:

• Fluency (written and spoken) in English and Arabic required.