Opportunity International
The Technical Advisor will oversee Malawi’s financial institution (FI) relationships for the AgFinance program. The role will be responsible for recruiting new partners and maintaining existing relationships, delivering technical assistance – such as staff capacity building, product development, portfolio management, and guarantee facility management – and ensuring program and project deliverables are achieved on time.
RESPONSIBILITIES include the following. Other duties may be assigned.
Financial Institution Relationship Management
- Conduct periodic market assessments and value chain analyses to determine client needs and inform on product design and product innovation.
- Network and recruit new financial institution partners and present to Executives or Boards for product launch and/or growth.
- Complete due diligence and risk assessments of prospective partners.
- Prepare and present proposals to the New Partner Approval Committee.
- Facilitate partnerships to support the value chain development for targeted crops between financial institutions, extension service providers, off-takers, producers, and smallholders.
- Develop strong working relationships and seamless communications with in-country partners.
- Oversee the management of partner agreements, funding agreements, and reporting from each partner.
- Conduct research into funding and investment opportunities that address the needs of partner financial institutions and in-country partners.
Provide Technical Assistance
- Develop and deliver technical assistance plans for each financial institution.
- Build staff capacity on agriculture finance products, portfolio management, and gender sensitivity through training.
- Assist with acquiring or utilizing loan guarantees, capital facilities, or insurance products.
- Help develop crop profiling, gross margin analyses, market assessments, landscape analyses, etc.
- Support product design and product development, including core banking modifications and reporting.
- Promote social goals of promoting down-market client support, lending to women, youth, and Persons With Disabilities.
- Liaise with Opportunity’s Digital Innovations Group (DIG) teams to identify and implement digitization efforts.
- Develop systems to provide data in the required format for Opportunity and other stakeholders on activities and performance of the AgFinance program.
Lending and Portfolio Management
- Manage relationships with financial institution partners, clients, and strategic partners to maximize loan portfolios’ performance.
- Develop financial products to meet the needs of Agriculture clients within the various partner financial institutions.
- Monitor and manage internal loan guarantee facilities placed with the FIs, including approving qualified loans and ensuring claims are paid out.
- Develop annual targets and technical assistance plans for partner loan portfolios.
- Monitor FI portfolio and guarantee reports every month for ongoing concerns, challenges, and success.
- Hold monthly meetings with the AgFinance Managers at the FIs to review monthly reports.
- Provide quality assurance through periodic monitoring of loans or core bank reporting.
Project Implementation
- Oversee and implement all AgFinance project activities for Malawi.
- Prepare funder and project reports according to the agreed schedule and set deliverables.
- Organize insight and/or monitoring trips for donors and other key stakeholders to visit clients and projects in Malawi.
Other Activities
- Coordinate with fundraising teams to collect and curate accurate information and pursue appropriate funding opportunities.
- Advise on project design and ensure partners have vetted and agreed on new projects.
- Coordinate with Impact Measurement Specialist on FI client data collection and analysis.
- Support the efforts of the AgFinance gender strategy to promote equitable access and gender awareness among our financial institution partners, including assessing products and projects with a gender lens and promoting practices that encourage financial inclusion and access for women.
- Assist with any FI data collection that may be required or ensure FI agreement to participate in impact surveys or research.
QUALIFICATIONS
- Master’s Degree in Finance, Banking, Business Administration, Agriculture, International Development, or related field or commensurate experience.
- 10-15 years of relevant experience in banking or microfinance and/or working with smallholder farmer groups and agribusinesses at a management or supervisory level in Africa.
- Senior-level management experience, with demonstrated ability to lead a team of people, manage diverse stakeholders, and make strategic decisions.
- Demonstrated experience presenting financial institution executives and ability to contribute to the strategy of growing financial institutions.
- Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Office apps, specifically Excel, Android Apps, and other business intelligence tools. Experience in PowerBI is a plus.
LANGUAGE SKILLS
- Fluent written and spoken English; Chichewa and/or other partner languages a plus.
TRAVEL REQUIREMENTS
- Ability and willingness to travel domestically up to 20% of the time, and occasional international travel.
ABOUT OPPORTUNITY INTERNATIONAL
Opportunity International is a global non-profit that has been empowering people to work their way out of poverty since 1971. Opportunity provides 18.7 million people with innovative financial resources, training, and support to grow their small businesses and send their children to school. In 2022, Opportunity International and its partners helped fund 5,600 schools that reached 1.6 million children, and they released more than $2.6 billion in capital across 30 countries. Discover more at opportunity.org or join the conversation on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter.
AgFinance Overview
Opportunity International (OI) AgFinance model is structured to bring scalable and high-impact loans and training to rural families living in poverty to build thriving rural communities. AgFinance accomplishes this by building relationships with financial institutions (FIs) to support the provision of tailored agricultural credit products and services to smallholders and agribusinesses while providing technology-enabled training and services to farmers.
The AgFinance Financial Products team is responsible for maintaining relationships with existing financial institutions, commercial banks, and microfinance institutions, coordinating or leading technical assistance, such as staff training, product development, portfolio management, capital and guarantee facility management, and more.