Background

UNCDF is the UN’s capital investment agency for the world’s 48 least developed countries (LDCs). With its capital mandate and instruments, UNCDF offers “last mile” finance models that unlock public and private resources, especially at the domestic level, to reduce poverty and support local economic development. This last mile is where available resources for development are scarcest; where market failures are most pronounced; and where benefits from national growth tend to leave people excluded. 

Mobile Money for the Poor (MM4P) is a programme launched by UNCDF in partnership with the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The MasterCard Foundation. MM4P provides support to branchless and mobile financial services in a select group of LDCs to demonstrate how the correct mix of financial, technical and policy support can build a robust branchless and mobile financial services ecosystem that reaches low income people in LDCs.

MM4P launched in Nepal in 2013. The preparatory phase of MM4P has been done in consultation with the Central Bank of Nepal, the Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) and with the permission of the Ministry of Finance, with a focus on research, awareness raising, assistance in strategy and business planning and working with the NRB. 

UNCDF also received permission from the Government of Nepal (GoN) to expand MM4P activities in Nepal under UNCDF’s Inclusive Finance Country Framework – known as the Access to Finance (A2F) – UNNATI Programme.

In 2015, MM4P secured a partnership with USAID to continue its activities in Nepal through 2016. MM4P’s overall work in Nepal is managed by it Technical Specialist, Digital Finance (TS DF), based in Kathmandu.  

The Better Than Cash Alliance (BTCA) is an alliance of governments, private sector and development organizations committed to accelerating the shift from cash to electronic payments. Shifting these payments from cash to electronic has the potential to improve the livelihoods of low-income people by advancing financial inclusion and enabling people to save, while giving governments, the development community and the private sector a more efficient, transparent and often safer means of disbursing payments. Nepal joined the BTCA alliance in 2015.

Nepal Rastra Bank

Nepal has made significant improvements over the years in terms of financial services delivery outlets/channels offered through both formal and informal financial institutions. Despite that, the level of adult Nepalese who are excluded from financial services remains significant. The data from the Finscope Nepal survey 2014 showed that only 40% of the population are banked, with significant disparities between the regions.

The central bank of Nepal, Nepal Rastra Bank had deployed various policy instruments to ensure that the financial services are able to make in-roads in remote and rural areas. Still financial services are concentrated in mostly urban and semi-urban areas, with Kathmandu valley region having the highest concentration. 

Project Outline

Financial Institutions are required to report a range of data to NRB on a regular basis. Collecting, managing and analyzing key data reported by financial institutions is done by NRB’s Bank and Financial Institution Regulation Department. This is done through a basic reporting system that is managed in-house at NRB and operates on a PHP-MYSQL database system.

The current system:

·         Allows Financial Institutions (FIs) download data reporting templates

·         Allows FIs to upload their data as formatted CSVs which are then housed in a MYSQL database

NRB plans to develop a new system which will:

·         Allow Financial Institutions (FIs) to download data reporting templates

·         Allow FIs to upload their data in a range of forms including csv, xml, excel

·         Allow NRB to efficiently manage the accounts of the reporting FIs

·         Provide timely information on compliance to NRB staff (reports on what data has been submitted by which institution)

·         Generate standarised reports and send these, via various channels, to key staff on a regular basis

·         Provide an easy to use interface for the generation of complex, ad hoc reports

·         Provide an easy to use interface for FIs to upload their data

·         Authenticate users based on an API-Token

·         Provide the basis for a range of business intelligence and visualization tools that will allow users to interact dynamically with the data, including spatial data. Development of the visualizations is beyond the scope of this project but the system should be designed in such a way as to be interoperable with a wide range of data visualization tools.

NRB also plans to develop an API, which will be able to communicate with the Management Information System or Core Banking Systems used by Financial Institutions to allow data to be pulled directly without the burden of manual reporting by FI staff.

The current system is developed in PHP-MYSQL, based on a non-standard customized library. Because of this, it will be necessary to develop the new system from scratch using of the standard PHP Frameworks preferably Laravel or Codeignitor or Zend.

MM4P seeks a consultant who shall 1. develop functional and system requirements for data collection, management and reporting system for Nepal Rastra Bank (System Analysis) and 2. to project manage system development in collaboration with NRB, using additional resources to do the coding and system development (Development Supervision).

Duties and Responsibilities

Scope of work

Work closely with NRB staff, particularly the Financial Institution Regulation and IT Departments, to develop

• Detailed functional requirements for main system including modules for:

o    Account Management and User Authentication;

o    Reporting Compliance (monitoring financial institutions compliance with reporting requirements both in terms of data being reported and the timeliness of reporting);

o    Data Upload;

o    Standard Report Generation and Communication to Internal and External Audiences;

o    Ad Hoc Report Generation Based on Queries;

o    User Interface Design;

o    Appropriate Security Protocols Including Encryption of Data during Transmission and Storage, Role Based Access and Obfuscation of Personally identifiable information.

• Scoping study for API Design:

Scoping study to gain an understanding of the Core Banking and/or Management Information Systems of key Financial Institutions to determine the practicality and requirements for the development of an API, which will provide an interface between FIs and the NRB.

• Detailed functional and technical requirements for API based on Scoping Study;
• Identify key skills and human requirements for project implementation.

Once the system requirements and design have been documented, it will be necessary to outline the skills need to carry out all of these tasks. This will include detailing the competencies and experience of any relevant software developers, user interface designers or and identification of any compatible plug in modules which could be exploited.

The Analyst will be guided and work under the supervision of NRB. It is expected that the consultant will be flexible in responding to changing requirements for NRB as circumstances may arise.

The scope of work can be updated as per required by NRB authorities.

Competencies

Functional Competencies:

• Demonstrate corporate knowledge and sound judgement;
• Self-development, initiative-taking;
• Acting as a team player and facilitating team work;
• Facilitating and encouraging open communication in the team, communicating effectively;
• Creates networks, manages relationships and promotes initiatives with partner organizations;
• Managing conflict;
• 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;
• Excellent presentation and representation skills in multicultural contexts;
• Ability to translate complex technical ideas to a non-technical audience in both verbally and in writing;
• Solve complex performance problems and architectural challenges.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree in IT and related fields is mandatory.

Experience:

• Experience developing functional and system requirements for reporting systems in the banking and financial sector is mandatory;
• Portfolio of at least 3 successful complex data based projects implemented using PHP I mandatory;
• Experience developing APIs suitable for reporting highly confidential data using REST, SOAP web services is mandatory;
• Experience developing reporting systems for the banking and financial sector;
• Experience managing complex system development projects;
• Experience on database schema design, optimization, analysis ability and RDBMS like MySQL and/or Oracle;
• Hands on experience in PHP and its frameworks e.g. CodeIgniter, Laravel etc.

Language:

• Fluency in English and any other language, preferably Nepali/Hindi.

Timeline, duration of assignment and duty station:

• Timeline: 2 January 2017 - 15 May 2017;
• Location: Kathmandu, Nepal;
• Total Maximum Number of Working Days for the assignment: 80 days. 

Travel:

• 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.  
• Please note that consultants residing in the duty station will not be compensated for living expenses. 
• Consultants will quote travel in the financial proposal in the following way: 1 return ticket (to and back from duty station).

Provision of Monitoring, Progress Controls & Payments:

• The developer will work onsite at NRB office under direct supervision of the NRB’s IT team;
• 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;
• Should be noted between the system analysis and implementation there would be a time lag to complete the hiring of the programmers.

Application:

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;
• Fully 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 (including professional fees, per diems in Kathmandu, Nepal (if applicable);

-Other professional expenses (such as insurance, taxes etc.)

-Duty travel (1 return ticket from country of origin to Kathmandu, Nepal.

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

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

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodology:

Step I: Screening;

Step II: Technical Evaluation Weight - 70% (Step 1: 20 Points + Step 2: 80 Points = 100 Points);

Step III: Financial Evaluation Weight - 30%.

Step I: Screening:

Applications will be screened and only applicants meeting the following minimum criteria (listed under education and experience) 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 4 ranked applicants shall be considered for a desk review.

• Desk Review (80 points)

A desk review shall be conducted for the top 4 shortlisted candidates.

The financial evaluation of those candidates who have reached 70% of the Technical Evaluation will take place.

Step III: 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 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.