Finance Officer - Coastal & Ocean Resilience (COR) at International Union for Conservation of Nature

DUTIES:

The Finance Officer- Coastal & Ocean Resilience (COR) will perform the following specific duties:

Projects financial management and reporting;

• Oversee and guide integrated financial management and reporting for the COR programme.
• Assess, review, and ensure application of IUCN and donors finance-related policies, instructions, and procedures.
• Updating projects expenditure into the NAV financial system ensuring they are properly and accurately coded and captured into the correct budget lines.
• Assign new signed projects award numbers on award vision and ensure the project is converted into a C-project on the project portal.
• Maintain projects and donors’ database information and files in both hard and soft copies.
• Support in updating the project portal ensuring projects budgets are well captured on the portal.
• Provide direct, proactive, hands-on budget and reports management support by providing monthly analyzed budget information / expenditure report to the Project Managers.
• Ensure compliance of all donor requirements, as per signed agreements, when reviewing expenses and preparing financial reports.
• Commission projects and specific audits as per donor reporting requirements and ensure completion on a timely basis and submission as per contract deadlines to donors.
• Ensure compliance by continually staying up to date on changes in donor and IUCN regulations and ensuring documentation and communication of all relevant regulations to unit members and program unit e.g., Program and Project Managers.
• Periodically review the donor receivables and follow up on projects income to ensure IUCN receives projects income as per funds requests on a timely basis.
• Update the time management system (TMS) with the staff time budget allocations on projects and ensure that staff time cost recovery is up to date and as per budget.
• On a quarterly basis, prepare the projects in deficit analysis report and ensure project balances are well justified, follow up on income receipt and allocations from donors and other allocations from internal IUCN offices and ensure closed projects are properly closed in the award.
• Coordinate, review and endorse responses to audit from internal and external audits and ensure the implementation of accounting audit recommendations.
• Perform other relevant duties as required.

Sub grants/Partners contractual/Financial Management Accountabilities;

• Participate in the Due Diligence process of partner’s selection for all sections relating to financial management and reporting.
• Carry out periodic sub-grantee/partner monitoring and financial reviews and provide appropriate follow up actions to ensure timely Implementing Partners (IPs) reporting in line with contractual obligations and entered in Nav.
• Under the guidance of the Senior finance officer, carry out financial management training for sub-grantee and support them to maintain proper books of accounts.
• Act as a resource to IPs on grant compliance issues related to donor requirements.
• Reconcile IP records on a quarterly basis and ensure that IUCN and partners records are reconciled.
• Monitor settlement of disbursements to IPs to ensure timeliness in disbursements to IPs.

Budget and Proposal Development;

• Focal point in COR programme budget development, including all projects, working with the programme team, HR and Admin teams to support in the proposal development process.
• Support in the proposal development processes through development of budgets of new projects funded by different donors eg GAC, EU, GCF, GEF, USAID, BMU IKI among others ensuring adequate costs are included based on IUCN’s budgeting guidelines as required.
• Support reviews that ensure proposal budgets/budget amendments are in line with donor regulations.
• Recommend or facilitate opportunities to help build staff and partners capacity in budget formulation and management.
• Support in annual IUCN budgeting process and development.

Others;

• Support in review and sign off process of donor contracts and consultancy contracts ensuring that IUCN contract and procurement compliance regulations are adhered to.
• Maintain an update memorandum register of fixed assets acquired by the various projects in order to track the acquisition, movement and disposal of such project fixed assets in line with donor agreements.
• Assist the Senior Finance Officer - Programmes in preparing and reviewing the project status report when called upon.
• Support in annual IUCN audits.
• Carry out any other duties that may be assigned by supervisors from time to time.

REQUIREMENTS
POSITION REQUIREMENTS:

Education;

• First degree in Accounting, Finance, or related field.
• Relevant professional qualification in accounting – CPA, ACCA level II, CIMA preferred.

Work Experience;

• At least 8 years’ relevant work experience in the field of accounting/finance, project management, business analysis, quality assurance and/or risk management.
• Prior experience in a similar role with a recognized regional or international development agency is highly desirable.
• Hands on experience in project proposal development and implementation with the following donors - GAC, GEF, GCF, EU, USAID, BMU IKI, KFW among others.
• Working knowledge and use of ERP-Navision.

Language Proficiency;

• Good verbal and written communication skills in English working knowledge of Kiswahili and another IUCN/Regional language would be an added advantage.

Functional competencies;

• Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite. Proficiency in advanced excel would be an advantage.
• Maintains high personal integrity and confidentiality.
• Result oriented person with attention to detail and accuracy.
• Ability to manage multiple tasks, work under pressure and meet deadlines while maintaining work relationships in the face of conflicting demands.
• Excellent relationship management and communication skills with the ability to work in a dynamic team environment.
• A confident and positive attitude with excellent cultural awareness and sensitivity.
• Willingness to travel.
• A self-starter who requires minimum supervision.

Core Competencies;

• Transparency: Able to build trust and contribute to informed and responsible decision making by carrying out the work of IUCN in a transparent manner; provides clear guidance to ensure that objectives and desired measurable results are understood by members of the team.
• Inclusiveness: Understands and accepts cultural diversity, and provide a tolerant, positive, and supportive working environment that fosters respect for diversity, demonstrates ability to work in a multicultural, multiethnic environment and to maintain effective working relations with people of different nationalities and cultural backgrounds.
• Professionalism: Promote the organization’s interests, objectives, and values in a diligent and professional manner.
• Accountability: Takes responsibility of individual and collective actions, promotes the IUCN One Programme approach.