Back International Consultant - Strategic Advisory in Investment Compliance and Risk Management

Background

The international community is set to commit to a new set of ambitious Sustainable Development Goals, reflecting the need to transform economies, end poverty, and tackle the challenge of climate change.

Private finance will be critical in helping countries to transform and grow in a sustainable way, providing jobs, particularly for the poorest and most marginalized and enabling countries to broaden their financing base and exit aid dependence. Private flows to developing countries are already increasing, reflecting increased attention on investment opportunities in global growth markets.

By blending development finance with private capital, all actors in a Blended Finance transaction benefit from win-win solutions. Wins for the development funders, as they can magnify the impacts of public sector support to leverage larger amounts of private finance.  Wins for commercial investors as they secure viable returns on worthwhile projects in developing countries since more funds are channeled to help transform economies, societies, and lives.

UNDP is currently considering several potential financial instruments to scale up its involvement with development financing, innovation and impact investments. These financial instruments will help attract new partners to finance achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, novelty and very limited use of the proposed instruments by UNDP system previously represent a significant challenge for the organization – it needs to build-up finance related technical capacity, set-up adequate operational and risk management processes, as well as properly position itself in the related ecosystem.      

One of the initiatives supporting the creation of the global development advisory and implementation services platform is UNDP SDG Innovative Finance (UNDP-UNSIF). It has been established with the objective of accelerating the scale-up of SDG investment models through leveraging investment partners. In cooperation with the implementation capacity of the UNDP and its partners, UNSIF facilitates and promotes measurable social impacts, economically sustainable for all its stakeholders. This target needs the creation of a new financing architecture that leverages the traditional development funding pathways of pooled grants with private debt, equity and quasi-equity investments. 

UNSIF is actively developing and supporting impact ventures accelerators (IVAs) which are  one of the practical approaches to help businesses become focused on delivering products and services, which directly contribute to the challenges embedded in the SDGs. Impact venture accelerators combine business acceleration programs with robust and dedicated efforts for SDG impact alignment including impact measurement and management practices.  UNDP has 3 major offers for impact accelerators: The first two offers are primary IVA models designed for businesses at various levels of maturity, and the third offer is an advisory service on SDG alignment for external business accelerators. 

UNDP has identified major impediments to aligning market capital with the SDG achievement:

Risk Management: When entering in a partnership with the private sector, especially on the matters relevant to financial products a new range of possible risks emerge for typical UN agencies. A prudent financial and operational risk management and quality assurance are crucial for UNDP to understand the risks they are exposed to in order to put robust processes and controls in place to counter threats, and effectively pursue their long-term SDG financing objectives within the unique environment of impact investment and blended finance.

Duties and Responsibilities

Institutional Arrangement

Scope of Work

UNDP-UNSIF platform is looking for an experienced professional to advise on comprehensive and robust legal, risk management, and compliance frameworks; and improve internal processes, rules, tools and systems to adopt, implement and monitor an integrated approach to SDG and development financing.

The objectives are:                                                                                                                                     -

• Gain and maintain market confidence – to maintain confidence in the capital market, with SDG investors, donors, governments and other stakeholders
• Increase financial sustainability of UNSIF
• Maintain effective risk mitigation strategy and operations to include perceived reputational risk, legal and financial exposure in relevant areas

UNSIF requires consultant that will:

• Develop a risk mitigation strategy and manage the risks of various portfolio, under the overall guidance of the project manager;
• Evaluate financing and funding structures and make recommendations for effectiveness and efficiencies;
• Ensure the applicable legal regulations are properly followed for the lifecycle of all investments; as well as range of involvements, innovative financial tools and arrangements UNSIF works on.   
• Provide comprehensive risk, legal, and ESG assessment and analysis of potential pipeline investments and other relevant initiatives.
• Identify and develop opportunities, maintain relationship with stakeholders in building the network of impact venture accelerators with the special focused on related business development centers in Asia-Pacific (e.g. Hong-Kong, Singapore etc.)
• Contribute to development of proposals, prospects and presentation materials for the impact accelerator, investment fund and other UNSIF  initiatives;
• Advise on the UNSIF on policy, initiatives, specific activities related to fintech, digital finance, digital technologies (AI, blockchain etc.) on risk, compliance and impact.
• Contribute to development of  training and mentoring  program; assist in the matching process between advisors and entrepreneurs
• Participate in the acceleration activities by providing strategy consulting to social ventures in areas such as business model, risk management and compliance, client acquisition, overall strategy, financing, fundraising, market research, operations, contract negotiations, etc.

Expected Outputs and Deliverables

The consultant is expected to achieve the following outputs:

• Risk Management Strategy Developed and updated
• Risk Management Action Plan implemented effectively across portfolios
• Draft Compliance policy framework for Fintech/digital tech developed
• A network of partners established in Asia’s financial centers, with a focus on Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay and Singapore with the specific descriptions and leads related to the scope of UNSIF’s interests and engagements as described above.

Institutional Arrangement

The consultant will work under the overall guidance of the Head of the UNSIF, and in close communication with designated team members.

Duration of the Work

1 May 2020- 30 April 2021 (a maximum of 180 working days)

Duty Station

home based, with possible travel to various locations in the Asia Pacific region.

Competencies

Corporate Competencies:

• Demonstrates integrity by modelling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
• Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
• Treats all people fairly without favouritism.

Required Skills and Experience

Educational Qualifications

• Master’s degree in business administration, finance, or business-related subjects.

Experience

• Previous senior management experience in international business organizations, with over 10 years of working experience in investment compliance and risk management
• Good understanding of the SDGs, Sustainable finance models, the Principles for Responsible Investment, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards for investment processes;
• Strong working experience in management, business consulting, policy development, regulatory or related field in business/ private sector;
• Proven ability to work with investors and regulatory bodies on compliance issues.  
• Proven knowledge and ability to evaluate comprehensive risk across financial and non-financial dimensions

Language requirements

• Fluency and proficiency in English (written and verbal)

Price Proposal and Schedule of Payments

The contract will be based on Daily. Consultant shall quote an all-inclusive Daily Fee for the contract period. The term “all-inclusive” implies that all costs (professional fees, communications, consumables, etc.) that could be incurred by the IC in completing the assignment are already factored into the daily fee submitted in the proposal. If applicable, travel or daily allowance cost (if any work is to be done outside the IC’s duty station) should be identified separately. Payments shall be done on a monthly basis based on actual days worked, upon verification of completion of deliverables and approval by the IC’s supervisor of a Time Sheet indicating the days worked in the period.

In general, UNDP shall not accept travel costs exceeding those of an economy class ticket. Should the IC wish to travel on a higher class he/she should do so using their own resources

In the event of unforeseeable travel not anticipated in this TOR, payment of travel costs including tickets, lodging and terminal expenses should be agreed upon, between the respective business unit and the Individual Consultant, prior to travel and will be reimbursed.

Travel costs shall be reimbursed at actual but not exceeding the quotation from UNDP approved travel agent. 

Evaluation Method and Criteria

Cumulative analysis

The criteria which shall serve as basis for evaluating offers as follows;

The award of the contract shall be made to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as a) responsive/compliant/acceptable; and b) having received the highest score out of set of weighted technical criteria (70%) *and financial criteria (30%). Financial score shall be computed as a ratio of the proposal being evaluated and the lowest priced qualified proposal received by UNDP for the assignment.

• The technical criteria (education, experience, language) will be worth a maximum 70 points.

Only the top 3 candidates that have achieved a minimum of 49 points (70%) from the review of the education, experience, and language will be eligible for Financial Evaluation;

• The financial proposal shall specify an all-inclusive1 daily fee (including number of anticipated working days and all foreseeable expenses to carry out the assignment);

Technical Criteria for Evaluation (Maximum 70 points)

• Criteria 1: Relevance of educational background - Max 10 points
• Criteria 2: Proven working experience in compliance and risk management - Max 40 points
• Criteria 3: Proven working experience in management, business consulting, policy development, regulatory or related field in business/ private sector - Max 20 points

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 49 points (70% of the total technical points) would be considered for Financial Evaluation.

Documentation required

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications. Please group them into one (1) single PDF document as the application only allows to upload maximum one document:

Incomplete proposals may not be considered. The shortlisted candidates may be contacted and the successful candidate will be notified.

To download form and related documents, please follow the link below:

https://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_notice.cfm?notice_id=64792