Short-term national consultant-Micro Finance Expert, CDMP Phase II

Background

Bangladesh is most vulnerable to several natural disasters and every year natural calamities upset people's lives in some part of the country. The major disasters concerned here are the occurrences of flood, cyclone and storm, flash flood, drought, tornado, riverbank erosion etc. As it is true in many parts of the world, microfinance services, a key intervention for poverty reduction, has reached almost thirty years of operations in Bangladesh providing financial services to around 3.3 crore accounts serving.

Global experiences demonstrate that the Microfinance institutions (MFIs) can profitably serve the poor and vulnerable populations, enabling them to reach large number of clients. But increasing number of disasters has impact on the micro finance programmes. The disasters increase vulnerability of the poor by devastating their property, health and their lives. When disaster strikes, the poor are in a greater danger of falling victim and suffer relatively more losses than the average population. Since MFIs target the poor, they work with high-risk populations and as their repayment capacity declines the MFI’s programmes are at risk. Experiences of several MFIs in disaster-prone areas, however, have demonstrated that micro-finance can reduce vulnerability by integrating disaster preparedness and risk reduction considerations into their services. When clients have access to needed finance and credit services during crisis situations, the impact of the disaster may considerably lessen. This provision of financial services during a crisis is only possible, if an MFI is prepared. An unprepared MFI may not only fail to protect its clients, but puts its own survival at risk.
Disaster and microfinance are interlinked because disaster impacts on livelihoods of microfinance clients. Disaster times demand the affected MFIs and their clients to mount quick and rapid responses. The MFIs may be required to minimize the losses to themselves and their clients by maintaining provision of services. This, however, requires that MFIs are familiar with and participate in carrying out important functions in disaster preparedness, reduction or mitigation and risk transfer, response, coping and recovery. Different actors including government should have specific strategy to promote the micro credit programme to be an effective means to reduce vulnerability of the people at risk.

The Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme-CDMP aims to further reduce the country's vulnerability to adverse natural and anthropogenic events through technical assistance in risk reduction and comprehensive disaster management activities. Supports are being channeled through government, private sectors, civil society and NGOs through different forms of programming aiming to mainstreaming disaster risk reduction systems at different level. MFIs are one of the actors that could benefit from CDMP’s mainstreaming DRR in to their programme. Therefore, a disaster risk reduction strategy for micro credit programme is required to identify, prepare the programmes in order to protect their institutions, their clients and staff from possible losses.

Duties and responsibilities

A Micro Finance Expert is sought to:

- conduct inventory of the various micro finance products operated by the various institutions to develop a gap analysis that serves as the background for the disaster risk reduction financing scheme;
- to develop a strategy for the mainstreaming of disaster risk reduction into microfinance products and practices,
- to develop a strategy for microfinance in disaster risk reduction through inclusive, participatory and formal processes leading to the endorsement by the micro finance regulatory authority (MRA).
- The desired candidate will have to have a wide range of network including local & national experienced actors representing the perspectives of both promoter and beneficiary level.
- Micro Finance Expert will also build project result framework, objectives and activities that are based on the strategy that is effective at technical and practical senses.

The incumbent is expected to perform the following tasks mentioned in sequential order along with a deadline starting from the date of signing the contract:

1. Building the understanding, conduct in house consultation and finalize work plan
2. Prepare an action plan to realize the outcome.
3. Conduct inventory of national / international best practice and innovations around DRR mainstreaming in the micro credit
4. Conduct a consultation meeting with Micro Finance Regulatory Authority (MRA), local NGOs and PKSF regarding the objectives, process and steps to develop the mainstreaming strategy.
5. Form a technical advisory committee to provide feedback on the process, assist the integration and finalization of the strategy.
6. Prepare a check list to review the existing products of PKSF & others MFIs to produce a gap analysis.
7. Identify at least 25 MF products currently being implementing by the various MFIs that have the potential of incorporating disaster risk reduction & climate change adaptation considerations.
8. Develop self-regulation mechanisms in the strategy that ascertain adequate community mobilization, and beneficiary selection that feed further into product design, audit, rating, consumer education etc
9. Develop a draft strategy of DRR integration in the micro credit programme based on the results of the review, consultation and opinions/suggestions from experts.
10. Organize & conduct validation workshop with experts including CDMP technical group.
11. Finalize the draft strategy incorporating the feedbacks.
12. Submit a final report outlining the key outputs (strategy) and the process being followed to do this job, analysis of the issues and limitations, learning and recommendations.

Expected outputs / deliverables:

- Institutional mapping of types, business goal, coverage, number of products and its implementation modalities including contact details of MFIs
- Minutes of each meeting
- Product assessment report identifying gaps and the way forward to attain the objectives of the assignment.
- Consultation meeting/workshop reports
- Draft strategy incorporating feedbacks from CDMP/MFIS
- Final draft of the strategy after being validated by the relevant actors
- Report of a debriefing session with CDMP professionals
- End of assignment report

Competencies

- Good communication and interpersonal skills and experiences in working effectively in a multicultural team environment
- Professionalism: flexibility to make ad-hoc changes as and when needed; ability to perform under stress; willingness to keep flexible working hours.
- Teamwork: ability to establish and maintain effective working relations as a team member; in multi-cultural, multi-ethnic environment with sensitivity and respect
- Communication: Excellent interpersonal and communication skills
- Drive to achieve result & meeting deadline
- Sound knowledge and/or experience of working with UNDP programmes an advantage;
- Excellent writing, editing, and oral communication skills in English.

Required skills and experience

Academic Qualifications:
- Master’s degree in a development studies, sociology, economics or related discipline.

Experience:
- Minimum 10 years’ experience in research & study with numbers of publications
- Demonstrated experience in designing, developing strategies, policies and guidelines with NGOs, international NGO, donor.
- Have a significant experiences on rural micro-finance, disaster context and working with the poor households would be a definite advantage;
- Fluent speaking and writing skills in Bangla and English;
- Excellent computing skills (word processing and spreadsheets).