The Associate, Access-to-Finance Program is responsible for supporting and driving the operations and strategic initiatives of the Access-to-Finance unit. This role involves administrative oversight, program management, due diligence, portfolio monitoring, capacity building, and stakeholder engagement to enhance financial access for various clients, including financial institutions and last-mile beneficiaries. Potential hire must have a background in banking (credit) and/or implementing access-to-finance programs.

Responsibilities

• Conduct overall program management by regularly tracking the fund’s performance against the Log frame, engaging all relevant stakeholders to resolve any issues arising, and resource planning.
• Oversee the successful completion of all light and detailed due diligences sanctioned by the Senior Manager, Access to Finance. This involves budgeting, logistical planning, review of reports, and stakeholder engagement.
• Lead the Portfolio Monitoring process for all onboarded participating financial institutions. This involves reviewing monthly and quarterly Portfolio Monitoring reports submitted by analysts, regularly updating the monitoring portal with onboarding and disbursement information, reviewing, and ensuring accurate and smooth performance of the monitoring portal, and engaging participating financial institutions to resolve any issues arising.
• Supervise the documentation of all program reports such as the monthly performance report, due diligence reports, and reports to investment committees.
• Support the Senior Manager, Access to Finance in the development of proposals, concept notes, and any other business development material as need arises.
• Develop and lead capacity-building training sessions with access to finance clients ranging from financial institutions to last mile program beneficiaries.
• Conduct market research and build business cases to support strategic business initiatives, process improvement initiatives, or organizational transformation.
• Perform reviews of spreadsheets, data computing platforms, and reports to ensure accuracy, consistency, and clear communication of results.
• Provide on-the-job training to junior analysts as well as participate in the delivery of other technical training within the firm.
• Perform process mapping field visits to each of the selected enterprises.
• Monitor and analyze data collected from enterprises.
• Support business owners during strategic discussions and recommendations for process improvements with the objective of improving business profitability.
• Adaptively write reports communicating key insights, performance, and other key trends for a variety of clients/audiences.
• Document reports that demonstrate progress and key performance milestones related to the training and capacity building of all the enterprises, improvement in business management, reporting of expected results, and the number of beneficiaries reached.

Qualifications

• Graduate with at least a second-class degree and above a quantitative field. MBA or related master’s level qualification would be highly desired
• Minimum of 6 years working experience in banking (credit) or access-to-finance programs.
• Openness to learning the automation process of data analysis and related development of back-end technology for the same.
• Strong report writing skills that are adaptable for a variety of audiences. Evidence of these skills are an added advantage.
• Interest in data analytics, business strategy, and investment research.