Job Overview

VACANCY ANNOUNCEMENT

Organization: World Bank

Position: Investment Officer

Job #: req10368

Organization: IFC

Sector: Investment

Grade: GG

Term Duration: 3 years 0 months

Recruitment Type: Local Recruitment

Location: Kathmandu, Nepal

Required Language(s): English

Preferred Language(s):

Closing Date: 12/23/2020 (MM/DD/YYYY) at 11:59pm UTC

Description

IFC—a member of the World Bank Group—is the largest global development institution focused on the private sector in emerging markets. We work in more than 100 countries, using our capital, expertise, and influence to create markets and opportunities in developing countries. In fiscal year 2020, we invested $22 billion in private companies and financial institutions in developing countries, leveraging the power of the private sector to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity. For more information, visit www.ifc.org.

IFC has embarked on an ambitious new strategy to stimulate more investment activity by Creating Markets, including in Low Income Countries (LICs) and Fragile and Conflict Situations (FCS). This new strategy requires a shift in our approach to proactively create, deepen and expand markets and projects rather than waiting for clients to propose projects for IFC to finance. This strategy also relies on upstream work with Governments and World Bank colleagues to enable private sector solutions and financing. We call this approach the “Cascade.” Working with clients, we will first seek private sector solutions to address development challenges, where such solutions are advisable and can be effective, and reserve public financing for projects only when other options are suboptimal.

The Financial Institutions Group (FIG) is one of the IFC’s key Departments responsible for a significant portion of IFC’s business volume, profitability and development reach, approximately 40%. FIG engages in a wide range of sub-sectors including Microfinance, SME, Gender, Climate, Insurance, Capital Markets, Housing, Distressed Assets, and other areas, with both investment and advisory services delivered globally to IFC’s clients through IFC’s global network. FIG has three main objectives: 1) financial inclusion 2) servicing the real economy and 3) mobilizing third-party resources.

The Financial Institutions Group is responsible for originating and executing investment transactions in financial sector in the South Asia region. The financial sector is a key priority in the region and the IFC is seeking to increase the number of investments both in volume and number in the region.

The South Asia Division is looking to recruit a Investment Officer to join its Financial Institutions Group to be based in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Duties and Accountabilities:

The duties and accountabilities of the role include but are not limited to:

Contribute to drafting strategies for countries for business development; and develop and execute strategies for more complex client engagements with the objective of building a robust investment pipeline;
Participate in the design of approaches and interventions to create upstream markets and provide substantive input to key components of Country Private Sector Diagnostics;
Maintain relationships with clients and other stakeholders (government, development partners, WBG) who are at a level where they can influentially participate in developing immediate and future business opportunities;
Participate as part of teams led by senior investment officers in putting together industry interventions and client engagement plans for IFC’s strategic/ top tier clients.
Draw comparisons with other industry projects across the region to determine fit with current portfolio, and conduct quality control to ensure accuracy and adequacy of analytical work completed by junior staff;
Assess and articulate the development impact and IFC additionality of moderately complex transactions.
Lead structuring of moderately complex investment transactions incorporating lessons of project evaluations and portfolio management experience. Ensure timely processing, thorough due diligence and client satisfaction;
Thoroughly review work provided by clients and work prepared by team members to ensure solid structure and consistency of legal documents with agreed upon terms;
Prepare investment committee materials focusing on financial and non-financial risk assessment and deal structuring in moderately complex transactions, with knowledge if policy and procedures application, assessing exceptions where relevant;
Gather market intelligence to stay informed of emerging trends in industry and country that could have broad impact on a country or portfolio;
Perform complex, credit risk rating assessments, covenant compliance reviews, and development impact assessment. Review the quality of portfolio work performed by more junior staff;
Supervise and ensure quality of portfolio reporting information prepared by junior staff and providing further inputs in the assessment of more complex projects;
Develop long-term relationships and engagement plans with key local clients to identify and act on opportunities for repeat business;

Negotiate moderately complex waivers, amendments, rescheduling; and help prepare official restructuring memos for approval.

Selection Criteria

Master’s degree in finance, economics or other related areas; accreditation as a CFA or CPA is considered a plus.
At least 8-12 years’ experience with a proven track-record of sourcing, structuring and closing investments preferably both in equity and debt.
In-depth understanding of IFC Investment and Advisory, required standards for a deal to be bankable to IFC standards; and good understanding of WBG instruments/ products and where there are opportunities for cross organizational collobration and/ or potential COIs with IFC investments.
Broad understanding of industry drivers, latest trends and changes, and standard market transaction arrangements;
Ability to review the financial analytical work performed by team members for moderately complex transactions based on in depth analytical and financial modeling skills and experience to know what to look for in efficiently ensuring quality control and directing the appropriate analysis to understand risk factors in a project;
Ability to build advanced structuring expertise for moderately complex investment transaction based on experience with diverse IFC financial instruments, a range of clients in different countries, and projects with different complexity factors;
Astute and efficient mindset in determining what’s required to make best transaction decisions, incorporating lessons learnt from the processing of earlier transactions and portfolio management;
Good understanding of what internal stakeholders and approving officials look for in assessing risk, additionality and development impact as well as fit with IFC’s strategy;
Capacity to understand, enable, and participate in market creation opportunities for multiple countries by demonstrating long term perspective, opne-mindedness, persistence. Innovation and ability to leverage all available tools and good understanding of IFC/WBG role/ value- add in new markets;
Ability to build long term engagement with clients and build credibility by demonstrating knowledge of their business/ culture, and maintain an ongoing dialogue on their business needs, operations and strategies, and opportunities for potential strategically aligned business deals;
Ability to participate and constructively contribute in meetings with mid level government officials on their constraints to private sector investment in their countries;
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, Ability to describe highly complex issues, approaches and lessons in a manner that is relevant and understandable to clients/ stakeholders;
Ability to comment effectively on documents, develop junior staff as writers, and lead the writing process of business specific documents;
Ability to clearly to articulate in a way that is understandable by clients/ stakeholders IFC’s requirements, value-add, financial and non-financial risks, development impact and how it is measured for sustainability;
Ability to supervise staff in business development, processing, portfolio management and/or specialty area by prviding technical guidance and delegating work to build and effectively use talents of staff, and balance workloads;
Ability to guide, advise, mentor, and coach junior staff and peers to develop and broaden their scope of skills, including providing on-the-job learning opportunities;
Excellent oral and written presentation skills in English are required;
Experience in International markets other than Nepal will be an advantage.
Poverty has no borders, neither does excellence. We succeed because of our differences and we continuously search for qualified individuals with diverse backgrounds from around the globe.