National Consultant to Support Women MSME FinTech Innovation Fund Project beneficiary verifications and for conducting focused group discussions or beneficiary interviews

Background

United Nations Capital Development Fund

UNCDF is the UN’s capital investment agency for the world’s 46 least developed countries. With its capital mandate and instruments, UNCDF offers “last mile” finance models that unlock public and private resources, especially at the domestic level, to reduce poverty and support local economic development.

UNCDF’s financing models work through two channels: financial inclusion that expands the opportunities for individuals, households, and small businesses to participate in the local economy, providing them with the tools they need to climb out of poverty and manage their financial lives; and by showing how localized investments — through fiscal decentralization, innovative municipal finance, and structured project finance — can drive public and private funding that underpins local economic expansion and sustainable development.   By strengthening how finance works for poor people at the household, small enterprise, and local infrastructure levels, UNCDF contributes to SDG 1 on eradicating poverty and SDG 17 on the means of implementation. By identifying those market segments where innovative financing models can have transformational impact in helping to reach the last mile and address exclusion and inequalities of access, UNCDF contributes to a number of different SDGs.

UNCDF’s Inclusive Digital Economies:

Since 2008, UNCDF has been supporting digital finance with significant success, with digital finance currently the largest part of its inclusive finance portfolio. This includes digital innovations linked to on an off-grid energy, agriculture, employment, health, and transport. With 60 professionals with strong digital finance experience across the globe and with several hundred projects in digital on-going, UNCDF is one of the leading development agencies in digital finance with a mission and expertise to reach very low-income customers in some of the world’s most difficult markets. UNCDF’s digital team and resources are currently spread across several programmes and UNCDF is in the process of consolidating its financial and technical resources to create a comprehensive team of experts in various domains to drive the new strategy “Leaving no one behind in the digital era”.

Based on this experience UNCDF started in 2017 to expand the scope of its programmatic agenda to go beyond digital finance. Through the “Leaving no one behind in the digital era” strategy, UNCDF is supporting, the emergence of inclusive digital economies. The strategy recognizes that reaching the full potential of digital financial inclusion in support of the SDGs aligns with the vision of promoting digital economies for the following reasons:

• The value of DFS is not obvious, especially to poor and vulnerable populations, as it is not closely linked to their ability to respond to their specific constraints and needs around agriculture, education, health, energy, and other key aspects of their daily lives.

• New innovative services should be developed to address these unmet needs. Innovation will not come from traditional providers but mainly from a range of new players (entrepreneurs, start-ups in various sectors, and digital platforms).

   

The ‘Leaving no one behind in the digital era’ strategy, to move from digital finance to digital economies builds upon and constitutes a logical integration of UNCDF interventions in financial inclusion and digital, developed over many years. The legacy of UNCDF intervention programmes was built through a range of country/regional programmes and global thematic initiatives, which has established a very strong reputation for UNCDF vis-à-vis donors and peers.

Please refer to www.uncdf.org 

Women MSME FinTech Innovation Fund in Cambodia

The United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) developed the Women MSME FinTech Innovation Fund as part of a regional program for Catalyzing Women’s Entrepreneurship and to create gender-responsive entrepreneurial ecosystem in partnership with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) and funded by the Government of Canada through Global Affairs Canada. In Cambodia, SHE Investments has been awarded a grant to support a two-year project to create a bookkeeping app as a tool to support MSMEs by enhancing their business operation digitization and creating digital transaction history for access to formal financing. SHE Investments expects to create the bookkeeping platform and services, register and train 400 women MSMEs to use KOTRA Riel (SHE) bookkeeping app and ensure disbursement of loans to 50 women MSME KOTRA Riel (SHE) bookkeeping app users from partner financial institution within project implementation period till 31 December 2021.

United Nations Capital Development Fund

UNCDF is the UN’s capital investment agency for the world’s 46 least developed countries. With its capital mandate and instruments, UNCDF offers “last mile” finance models that unlock public and private resources, especially at the domestic level, to reduce poverty and support local economic development.

UNCDF’s financing models work through two channels: financial inclusion that expands the opportunities for individuals, households, and small businesses to participate in the local economy, providing them with the tools they need to climb out of poverty and manage their financial lives; and by showing how localized investments — through fiscal decentralization, innovative municipal finance, and structured project finance — can drive public and private funding that underpins local economic expansion and sustainable development.   By strengthening how finance works for poor people at the household, small enterprise, and local infrastructure levels, UNCDF contributes to SDG 1 on eradicating poverty and SDG 17 on the means of implementation. By identifying those market segments where innovative financing models can have transformational impact in helping to reach the last mile and address exclusion and inequalities of access, UNCDF contributes to a number of different SDGs.

UNCDF’s Inclusive Digital Economies:

Since 2008, UNCDF has been supporting digital finance with significant success, with digital finance currently the largest part of its inclusive finance portfolio. This includes digital innovations linked to on an off-grid energy, agriculture, employment, health, and transport. With 60 professionals with strong digital finance experience across the globe and with several hundred projects in digital on-going, UNCDF is one of the leading development agencies in digital finance with a mission and expertise to reach very low-income customers in some of the world’s most difficult markets. UNCDF’s digital team and resources are currently spread across several programmes and UNCDF is in the process of consolidating its financial and technical resources to create a comprehensive team of experts in various domains to drive the new strategy “Leaving no one behind in the digital era”.

Based on this experience UNCDF started in 2017 to expand the scope of its programmatic agenda to go beyond digital finance. Through the “Leaving no one behind in the digital era” strategy, UNCDF is supporting, the emergence of inclusive digital economies. The strategy recognizes that reaching the full potential of digital financial inclusion in support of the SDGs aligns with the vision of promoting digital economies for the following reasons:

• The value of DFS is not obvious, especially to poor and vulnerable populations, as it is not closely linked to their ability to respond to their specific constraints and needs around agriculture, education, health, energy, and other key aspects of their daily lives.

• New innovative services should be developed to address these unmet needs. Innovation will not come from traditional providers but mainly from a range of new players (entrepreneurs, start-ups in various sectors, and digital platforms).

   

The ‘Leaving no one behind in the digital era’ strategy, to move from digital finance to digital economies builds upon and constitutes a logical integration of UNCDF interventions in financial inclusion and digital, developed over many years. The legacy of UNCDF intervention programmes was built through a range of country/regional programmes and global thematic initiatives, which has established a very strong reputation for UNCDF vis-à-vis donors and peers.

Please refer to www.uncdf.org 

Women MSME FinTech Innovation Fund in Cambodia

The United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) developed the Women MSME FinTech Innovation Fund as part of a regional program for Catalyzing Women’s Entrepreneurship and to create gender-responsive entrepreneurial ecosystem in partnership with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) and funded by the Government of Canada through Global Affairs Canada. In Cambodia, SHE Investments has been awarded a grant to support a two-year project to create a bookkeeping app as a tool to support MSMEs by enhancing their business operation digitization and creating digital transaction history for access to formal financing. SHE Investments expects to create the bookkeeping platform and services, register and train 400 women MSMEs to use KOTRA Riel (SHE) bookkeeping app and ensure disbursement of loans to 50 women MSME KOTRA Riel (SHE) bookkeeping app users from partner financial institution within project implementation period till 31 December 2021.

Duties and Responsibilities

Working under the direct supervision of the UNCDF Regional Manager for the Digital Hub for Asia, in close collaboration with UNCDF project partners in Cambodia, the consultant will be responsible for providing high quality technical support to design and implement FGDs/KIIs including:

Task Description

• Translate the FGD/KII questionnaire prepared by UNCDF team into Khmer

• Conduct 2 virtual FGD sessions (of 10 participants each) or 20 beneficiary interviews over phone

• Translate the beneficiary interview findings into English

Deliverable

• Translated guideline, agreed with UNCDF

• Moderate FGD sessions over Zoom and call beneficiaries for guided interviews to gather findings

• Summary report from beneficiary interview

Interested offeror must read the Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice, which can be viewed at https://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_notice.cfm?notice_id=83616 for more detail information about term of reference, instructions to offeror, and to download the documents to be submitted in the offer through online.

Competencies

• Demonstrates integrity by modelling the UN’s values and ethical standards

• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability

• Treats all people fairly without favouritism

• Fulfils all obligations to gender sensitivity and zero tolerance for sexual harassment

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• A Master’s degree in Management, Finance, Rural Development, Economics or other related fields.

   

  Professional Experience:

• At least 2 years of professional experience in the fields of social impact research or impact evaluation of projects with prior experience in conducting primary research on project beneficiaries;

• Previous experience with international development programmes is preferable;

• Substantial previous experience with gender mainstreaming approaches;

• Experience in designing questionnaires and delivering researches following adequate research methodologies.

   

  Language Requirements:

• Fluency in Khmer and English (Speaking, Reading, Writing) is required.

Please be informed that we don’t accept application submitted via email.

Interested individual offeror must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications:

 1. Proposal: Letter of explaining why they are most suitable for the work

2. Financial proposal (Duly accomplished Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided by UNDP)

3. Personal CV including past experience in similar projects and at least 3 references

 Interested Offerors are required to submit application via UNDP jobsite system as the application screening and evaluation will be done through UNDP jobsite system. Please note that UNDP jobsite system allows only one uploading of application document, so please make sure that you merge all your documents into a single file. Your on-line applications submission will be acknowledged where an email address has been provided. If you do not receive an e-mail acknowledgement within 24 hours of submission, your application may not have been received. In such cases, please resubmit the application, if necessary. Please combine all your documents into one (1) single PDF document as the system only allows to upload maximum one document.

Any request for clarification/additional information on this procurement notice shall be communicated in writing to UNDP office or send to email chanpisey.ky@undp.org  and cc procurement.kh@undp.org . While the Procurement Unit would endeavor to provide information expeditiously, only requests receiving at least 5 working days prior to the submission deadline will be entertained. Any delay in providing such information will not be considered as a reason for extending the submission deadline. The UNDP's response (including an explanation of the query but without identifying the source of inquiry) will be posted in Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice page as provided above. Therefore, all prospective Offerors are advised to visit the page regularly to make obtain update related to this Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice