Job: Senior Financial Sector Specialist

Location: Washington
Deadline: Thursday, 25 July 2013 

Description

Background / General description:

CGAP (Consultative Group to Assist the Poor) is dedicated to advancing financial inclusion to improve the lives of the poor.

The poor are by necessity active managers of their financial lives but typically remain excluded from formal financial services. As a result, they are forced to rely on the informal mechanisms available to them that can often be unreliable and very expensive. Against this backdrop, CGAP shares the powerful and broad vision for financial inclusion that has emerged among global and national policy makers, practitioners, and the development community: Our vision is a world where everyone can access and effectively use the financial services they need to improve their lives.

Our mission is to improve the lives of poor people by spurring innovations and advancing knowledge and solutions that promote responsible and inclusive financial markets. CGAP's role is to advance and accelerate development of these financial markets by working on frontier issues, which when unlocked, have the greatest potential to deliver high-quality financial services that benefit a growing number of those who are currently unserved or underserved.

CGAP's new strategy has five priority areas:

• Understanding demand to effectively deliver for the poor
• Financial innovation for smallholder families
• Developing robust provider ecosystems
• Building an enabling and protective policy environment globally
• Promoting effective and responsible funding for financial inclusion 
  CGAP strives to ensure that clients are at the center of financial inclusion by demonstrating how financial service providers can be more client-centric and by improving global data on financial inclusion so that its impact is better understood. High levels of financial exclusion indicate a clear mismatch between the demand for financial services and their supply. A major reason for this mismatch has been the lack of attention on effectively sourcing and translating information on poor people's financial needs, behaviors, and preferences into a better service offering. The focus has been on products - often one product (microcredit) to one client segment (microentrepreneurs) - rather than listening to poor people and offering solutions to meet their complex and evolving financial services needs over their lifetimes.
   
  To ensure that access to financial services improves poor people's lives, financial inclusion must be client-centric. Client-centricity is about providing financial solutions based on a deep understanding of poor people's needs, preferences, and behaviors. This will require a shift from a transactional approach (i.e., narrow focus on selling a product to a customer) to a relationship approach (i.e., broad focus on understanding the dynamic needs and behaviors of customers over their lifecycle).
   
  To achieve this first strategic priority area, understanding demand to effectively deliver for the poor, we have identified two main outcomes:
   
  Strategic Outcome 1: Providers systematically source and translate client-specific insights into a suite of quality and sustainable financial services at scale. To make a tangible difference to clients, CGAP's demand work must link with the supply side that is ultimately responsible for effective delivery. CGAP's work on this outcome responds to the challenge of increasing the commitment, incentives, and capacity of providers to source and translate insights into a better service offering. To achieve this outcome CGAP will work with partners to
   
  (i) build foundational knowledge on clients,
   
  (ii) translate client insights into better service offerings, and
   
  (iii) focus on underserved client segments such as the extreme poor, youth, and small businesses.
   
  Strategic Outcome 2: Financial inclusion stakeholders use harmonized, high-quality global data and impact research to make evidence-based decisions that advance responsible financial access to the poor. Obtaining good data on financial inclusion is a first step in improving the empirical evidence base on the impact of financial access. Better evidence is needed, particularly with respect to usage and quality, using various research methods. Improving the understanding of the impact of access to financial services as well as how and when impact is achieved will help improve the products and services on offer. Moreover, it will allow for setting more clear and realistic expectations of the role of finance, as one, among other, tools in the development tool box.
   
  We are looking for a professional to join CGAP's expanding efforts in understanding demand to effectively deliver financial services to the poor. CGAP is committed to being a relentless voice for the poor within the broader financial inclusion landscape and the Senior Financial Sector Specialist will join the Clients and Products team which has a central role in all of CGAP's work.
   
  The ideal candidate should be a strategic thinker and idea generator with strong implementation capacity. S/he should be able to effectively work across teams, build internal alliances, and manage joint programs. A strong understanding of academic and/or business research is required to help advance CGAP's global learning agenda, while previous operational experience will help ensure that learning can be translated into better delivery for the poor.
   
  The selected candidate will be able to communicate with a broad range of stakeholders from world-renowned academics to business managers of institutions delivering financial services. A curious brain, insatiable thirst for evidence, and a pragmatic orientation are all desired qualities. The person should be highly motivated, with a strong work ethic and the ability to juggle competing priorities, while bringing to bear fresh thinking and sound judgment.
   
  Experience in economics, finance, or banking is necessary to work effectively in this position as is significant experience or exposure to academic or business research.
   
  Note: If the selected candidate is a current Bank Group staff member with a Regular or Open-Ended appointment, s/he will retain his/her Regular or Open-Ended appointment. All others will be offered a 2 year term appointment.

Duties and Accountabilities:

The Senior Financial Sector Specialist will join a dynamic team in the start-up phase of delivering on an ambitious agenda to ensure that clients are at the center of financial inclusion. S/he joins a team of five people within an organization that values big ideas, flexible and creative approaches, evidence, pushing the frontier, and a passion for our mission. As a senior team member, the candidate will work closely with the Team Manager and team members to refine strategic direction and agree on the most impactful activities to pursue. S/he will drive core areas of the team's agenda and must be able to work independently, while at the same time mentoring and guiding colleagues as part of project teams formed to execute on specific deliverables.

Given CGAP's multiple partners and the emerging Clients at the Center community of practice, the Senior Financial Sector Specialist must be comfortable coordinating with external partners, negotiating collaborative arrangements, sharing success, and also taking strong or even opposing positions diplomatically if needed.

As part of the Clients and Product's engagement model, we will engage in both foundational research and targeted engagement with financial service providers for demonstration purposes to achieve the desired outcomes. The Senior Financial Sector Specialist should thus have the ability to be at home with research trends and issues, including impact evaluations, as well as the more operational challenges of translating insights about clients into better delivery.

The Senior Financial Sector Specialist will

• Drive major initiatives of the team, particularly in the area of demand side research, impact evaluations, and translating client insights into better delivery which includes generating new ideas, establishing priorities and goals, and monitoring progress.
• Design specific programs for impact and sustainability.
• Play a key role in setting and refining the team's strategic direction as issues and the external landscape evolves; help craft annual work plans.
• Inspire mindset and behavior change by providing evidence-based advice and solutions based on sound diagnosis and knowledge.
• Manage relationships (and develop new ones) with members of a broad community of practice interested in client-centricity to build momentum for collective action, catalyze energy and resources to areas that CGAP deems priority.
• Develop research strategies, manage or oversee research teams, and share knowledge, trends, and lessons learned across the World Bank Group, CGAP members, and with clients and partners, articulating ideas verbally and in writing in a clear and compelling way.
• Advocate and influence through compelling oral and written communication to diverse stakeholders at varied levels (providers, policymakers, researchers and funders).
• Monitor trends in financial inclusion client research in both academia and private sector; identify new ideas, resources, and opportunities for the team.
• Mentor and guide team members, and manage consultants.
• Contribute to CGAP's overall workplan, participate in cross-cutting CGAP teams and corporate work as appropriate.

Selection Criteria:

Candidates must demonstrate competencies in the following areas:

• Project Design for Impact and Sustainability - Contributes to the design of projects and programs, based on an understanding of the country and sector context.
• Client Orientation - Maintains client relationships in the face of conflicting demands or directions and provides evidence-based advice and solutions based on sound diagnosis and knowledge.
• Drive for Results - Identifies the needed resources to accomplish results involving multiple stakeholders and finds solutions to obstacles affecting key deliverables.
• Teamwork (Collaboration) and Inclusion - Shows leadership in ensuring the team stays organized and focused, and actively seeks and considers diverse ideas and approaches.
• Knowledge, Learning and Communication - Leads in the sharing of best practice, trends, knowledge and lessons learned across units and with clients and partners, articulating ideas verbally and in writing in a clear and compelling way across audiences of varied levels.
• Business Judgment and Analytical Decision Making - Gathers inputs, assesses risk, considers impact and articulates benefits of decisions for internal and external stakeholders over the long term. 
  In addition to meeting the World Bank-wide generic criteria for positions of this level, it is expected that the selected candidate would meet the following criteria:
• Master's degree in Business, Finance, Economics, Development Studies, International Relations, or other related field and a minimum of 8 years of relevant work experience.
• Significant experience working in developing/emerging markets on financial inclusion/private sector development.
• Demonstrated in-depth understanding of and practical experience in access to finance for low income populations, with a focus on demand side research and/or operational issues.
• Creative thinker with the proven ability to think conceptually and rapidly analyze diverse information from varied sources.
• Excellent business judgment and analytical decision-making skills.
• Demonstrated ability to him/herself produce or manage others in defining learning agendas, designing research strategies and executing on them in a timely and effective manner.
• Prior work on product development or refinement, and organizational processes to market and deliver services.
• Familiarity with a range of research methods, from qualitative to quasi-experimental and quantitative.
• Proven track record in producing publications, quality written papers/reports.
• Agile, curious, and open mind; an ability to learn, adapt, and be innovative. Actively seeks and considers diverse ideas and approaches.
• Strong client orientation and ability to maintain complex client relationships in the face of conflicting demands or directions
• Exceptional oral communication skills, and experience publicly representing organizations in conferences, meetings with senior representatives, and other speaking engagements.
• Experience with data mining a plus.
• Ability to operate effectively with all levels of staff, working both as a peer and as a lead that provides a role model and enhances the team-leadership skills of team members.

More Info and Application