Initiation Consultant to support country selection and set up of new initiative on smallholder resilience

Background

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The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is a global organization with 17,000 staff working in approximately 170 offices globally towards supporting governments in developing strong policies, institutions and partnerships to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals. UNDP's policy work carried out at HQ, Regional and Country Office levels, forms a contiguous spectrum of deep local knowledge to cutting-edge global perspectives and advocacy. In this context, UNDP invests in the Global Policy Network (GPN), a network of field-based and global technical expertise across a wide range of knowledge domains and in support of the signature solutions and organizational capabilities envisioned in the Strategic Plan. Within the GPN, the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support (BPPS) has the responsibility for developing all relevant policy and guidance to support the results of UNDP's Strategic Plan. In order to streamline its financial and investment engagement, UNDP launched the Sustainable Finance Hub,a finance and innovation platform, that draws on a critical mass of UNDP expertise, initiatives, and partnerships to support the mobilization and leveraging of resources for the SDGs and lead the implementation of the new UNDP private sector strategy and other initiatives. The Hub is an integral part of both the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support (BPPS) and the Bureau of External Relations and Advocacy (BERA), as well as part of the GPN.

The Insurance and Risk Finance Facility is UNDP’s corporate initiative for all issues related to insurance and risk-finance within the SFH. The Facility manages UNDP’s global representation in key global bodies such as the Insurance Development Forum and the InsuResilience Global Partnership. It also provides a one-stop shop for UNDP Country Offices, Programme Countries and partners for all insurance and risk finance issues, for networking, partner development, policy and guidelines, technical and implementation capacity and assistance, and financing opportunities. This work covers a range of critical areas where insurance and risk transfer solutions and collaboration with the insurance industry can add significantly to achieving and delivering on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Covering inclusive insurance, sovereign risk financing, insurance investments, natural capital, health, SME development and more, UNDP will work towards developing and delivering insurance solutions together with countries and communities, as well as collaborating with partners to transform insurance markets through enhancing legislation, regulation, and institutional capacity. The IRFF is already active in 26 countries.

The IRFF is preparing its new line of work in agricultural insurance which will be active in 5 countries over 5 years, which will focus on advancing smallholder farmers’ financial resilience towards climate adaptation. For this work 2 countries, namely Ethiopia and India have already been selected by the donor and 3 more countries are meant to be selected through an analytic process that aims to identify opportunities and possible achievable results. The process of selecting the 3 additional countries will be key to define country interventions and in particular assess the feasibility of results in each of the intervention countries.

Duties and Responsibilities

The consultant will support the IRFF in setting a project development roadmap for the first phase of implementation of the initiative, based on the project document, donor inputs and feedback from technical leads. This roadmap should include an implementation timeline.

The consultant will also work jointly with the inclusive insurance workstream lead on conceptualizing and developing the process for country selection to be validated with the donor according to general guidelines of the project. This process will use the existing research on the preselected countries and will deepen and visualize this analysis for decision making. The consultant will participate in the country selection process that will include preselected UNDP country offices, the donor and other organizations involved.

For each of the five selected countries the consultant will prepare the country results framework which will be presented to the donor as part of the initiative planning. This framework needs to analyse all past and active country interventions, along with possible future results that the IRFF could achieve in each dimension according to possible interventions. The analysis should encompass the different dimensions defined by the IRFF as foundations for the scale up of agricultural insurance included in the following table:

• Agricultural insurance background
  • Partnerships among value chain actors actively engaging in integrating agricultural insurance to business models to support SSPs resilience
  • Availability of insurance covers protecting diverse crops and different risks (hail, drought, floods, frost, pests and diseases)
  • Commercial and subsidized business models growing outreach
• Market foundation for agricultural insurance
  • Technology solutions (digital payments, agricultural and climate data, remote sensing) being integrated to agricultural insurance business models
  • Insurance intermediaries and solutions providers developing business models that drive market expansion and integrate value chains
  • Local insurers and global reinsurers engaging in agricultural insurance activities
• Enabling Environment
  • Fiscal and agricultural policies
    • Public agricultural insurance programs allocating resources for premiums
    • Agricultural financing and input programs creating linkages to insurance
    • Processes for public financial management facilitating public procurement
  • Insurance Regulation
    • Regulatory sandboxes facilitating the launch of new insurance products
    • Conducive regulation for parametric insurance
    • Actuarial capacity in the regulators dealing with limited or new data
  • Other public policies
    • Adaptive social protection policies integrating climate insurance to protect SSPs
    • NDCs and NAPs integration of climate insurance

Additionally, the consultant will support the onboarding of the country and central teams as they will join the initiative to adopt the initial decisions taken for the implementation of the initiative based on the project development roadmap and timeline.

Expected Outputs and Deliverables

Competencies

Functional Competencies:

• Motivated by a willingness to respond rapidly and effectively to client needs
• Strong analytical and judgmental skills
• Use initiative to deliver required outputs and planned results
• Independent assessment and integrity

• Listens actively and responds effectively
• Excellent inter-personal working skills

Communication:

• Excellent written and oral communication skills
• Ability to write in plain English, articulate ideas and concepts with minimal text and high-quality editing and data visualization skills

Required Skills and Experience

Academic qualifications:

• Minimum Master’s degree in Development or Social Studies, Business, Economics or Actuarial Science.

Experience:

• At least twenty years of professional experience in the implementation of insurance programmes linked to development, or to inclusive financial services in particular research, project set up and implementation, and project evaluation is required
• Proven successful track record with donors and development partners in developing assignments and projects in a diversity of geographies is highly required
• Previous experience with international development organizations, such as UN/UNDP, FAO, IFAD, WFP, WB/IFC is an asset
• Previous experience with initiatives linked to work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is an asset
• Language: Fluency in written and spoken English is required