Impact Management Associate / Executive - (Financial Services, Infrastructure & Climate, or Industries, Technologies & Services Sectors) at British International Investment

Responsibilities

• Our preference is for candidates with local knowledge and experience of the (i) Financial sector to be located in Kenya and (ii) Infrastructure to be located in India, we may be able to offer flexibility on location/sector for the right candidate. We would also consider other BII office locations, such as UK, South Africa or Nigeria. (Note we can only offer right to work sponsorship to the UK.
• The candidates will be responsible for delivering effective and high-quality impact management.
• Candidates will report to the respective Development Impact Manager across the 3 sectors as identified above. You will play an active role in providing development impact inputs throughout the deal cycle, including strategy development, investment process, portfolio management and responsible exits, in order to deepen the impact on people and planet. Specific responsibilities will be driven by the candidate’s level of experience, priorities, and the needs of the team at the time, but are expected to include the following:

Delivering impact management for the relevant part of the investment portfolio:

• Assessing development impact as part of origination and due diligence process. Working seamlessly with investment team colleagues to inform the investment decision and define the impact objectives and appropriately escalating issues.
• Developing a high-quality development impact dashboard and Impact Score for each investment based on the Impact Management Project’s consensus which will involve desk research, facilitating discussions, due diligence and managing external suppliers where necessary. Liaise with other Impact Group teams (e.g. E&S, Climate Finance and Gender & Diversity etc) during the investment process where relevant.
• Defining the monitoring plan for the investments and post investment, collecting the impact metrics to track actual impact of investments, ensuring analysis is timely and high quality.
• Assessing how investments are performing against their initial development objectives, determining when course corrections are required and completing exit reviews, feeding back learnings to the organisation.
• Actively managing investments to enhance the impact by participating in the design and implementation of initiatives and partnerships.
• Developing and delivering strategies for the sector ensuring consistency with BII wide strategies and frameworks.
• Developing sector framework and tools (e.g. benchmarks) ensuring consistency with BII wide strategies and frameworks.

Relationship & Stakeholder management:

• Contact point for the relevant Sector team, attending and representing development impact in relevant meetings
• Engagement with investees on impact management activities and data
• Ensuring appropriate communication of priorities, changes to processes and frameworks etc to internal teams
• Manage sector-specific relationships including with experts, peers and suppliers.

Support and contribute to the wider Development Impact team:

• Contribute to the continual development of BII’s impact management framework ensuring tools, systems, policies and capabilities remain world class.
• Support other team members to ensure all activities within the sector are consistent with sector approach.
• Developing the overall capability and team effectiveness of the Development Impact team and sharing learnings within the team, the broader Impact Group and the organisation.

The candidate

We have the flexibility to hire at Associate or Executive level. The offered level will be driven by candidate experience and performance during interview process.

Background

• Prior work experience in a relevant field, preferably as an impact manager within an investment setting or, with a good grounding in development impact assessment with a commercial mindset.
• Strong academic credentials. Preferably a Master’s degree in economics, Development Economics or equivalent analytical post graduate degree.
• Work experience in developing countries, preferably in Africa and/or South Asia.

Skills

• Practical understanding of impact management, private sector development and how to achieve development outcomes through investment.
• Experience of making high quality judgment calls to make impact investment decisions and manage impact outcomes. Conscious of costs and benefits and capability to explain opportunities and challenges to investee companies.
• Understanding of underlying commercial strategies and ability to consider development impact in an entrepreneurial and pragmatic manner.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills. Confident dealing with complexity and can combine objective quantitative analysis with expert qualitative judgment. Confident in managing data and collating and presenting evidence.
• Knowledge and network of third parties in impact management and measurement space who can be leveraged to help deliver enhanced impact with our investee companies.
• Excellent project management, analysis and reporting skills, with the ability to deliver data and insights informed strategic approaches. Able to prioritise tasks and manage multiple work streams simultaneously in a complex and fast-moving environment.
• Strong communication skills: the ability to describe complex development impact scenarios with accuracy and concision and the ability to explain development impact to non-professionals and across a range of cultural backgrounds.
• Self-starter with a bias for action and problem-solving approach.
• Resilient to time pressures and competing priorities, confident in prioritising and taking decisions with imperfect information.
• Proven capability of effective teamwork and strong stakeholder/relationship management.
• The role will require regular travel, mostly within Africa and South Asia to work with investee companies.
• Candidates should be strongly motivated by BII’s development mission and ideally demonstrate some commitment to development or social goals through previous executive or non-executive activity.