Investment Specialist

The Investment Specialist supports UNCDF in designing, deploying, and managing recovery-focused financing instruments under the FRRP, while contributing to regional investment coordination across Arab States. The role involves portfolio development, investment structuring, financial sector analysis, stakeholder engagement, and regional coordination.

Responsibilities

• Design and operationalize recovery and resilience financing instruments, including portfolio credit guarantees, risk-sharing facilities, and concessional financing mechanisms, in line with UNCDF’s development of finance principles.
• Conduct financial, institutional, and portfolio assessments of partner banks, MFIs, and financial intermediaries.
• Support the negotiation of participation agreements, term sheets, and risk-sharing parameters with financial institutions.
• Ensure instruments maintain minimum concessionally, additionality, financial sustainability, and limited market distortion.
• Monitor utilization, financial performance, exposure, and claims risk of FRRP-supported instruments.
• Coordinate with UNCDF’s Investment and Finance Oversight Division (IFOD) and Operations and Oversight Division (OOD) to ensure compliance with risk, fiduciary, safeguards, and reporting requirements.
• Prepare inputs for internal investment reviews, management updates, and donor reporting.
• Support adaptive portfolio management in response to evolving market, liquidity, or political conditions.
• Analyze liquidity conditions, cost of funds, credit constraints, currency risk, and regulatory developments affecting the Palestinian financial sector.
• Translate market intelligence into practical adjustments to instrument design and deployment.
• Provide technical inputs to UNCDF and UNDP on financial-sector implications for recovery and resilience of programming.
• Engage with local financial institutions, regulators, DFIs, donors, and UN partners to support implementation and co-financing of FRRP instruments.
• Support coordination with parallel donor-funded or DFI-led facilities to ensure complementarity.
• Represent UNCDF in technical discussions related to recovery finance and financial sector stabilization.
• Provide technical advisory support to participating financial institutions on portfolio management, risk sharing, and recovery-oriented lending approaches.
• Support the design and delivery of investment-linked technical assistance.
• Contribute to drafting or review of operational manuals, guidelines, and procedures related to FRRP instruments.
• Contribute Palestine-based lessons learned to UNCDF’s Arab States investment community of practice.
• Support regional knowledge products on recovery finance, guarantees, and fragile context investment.
• Provide limited surge or advisory support to regional initiatives, as requested by the Regional Investment Lead.
• Perform other duties within their functional profile as deemed necessary for the efficient functioning of the Office and the Organisation.

Requirements

• Advanced university degree (master's degree or equivalent) in Finance, Economics, Business Administration, Development Finance, or a related field is required, OR a first-level university degree (bachelor’s degree) in the areas stated above, in combination with an additional two years of qualifying experience, will be given due consideration in lieu of the advanced university degree.
• Minimum 5 years (with Master’s) or 7 years (with Bachelor’s) of progressively responsible experience in development finance, investment, banking, or financial-sector advisory is required.
• Demonstrated experience with credit guarantees, risk-sharing instruments, SME finance, or blended finance.
• Experience working in fragile or conflict-affected contexts is strongly desirable.
• Experience with a development finance Institutions (DFI), International Finance Institutions (IFI), or UN investment function is preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to work in fast-paced environments and matrix-based organizations is desired.
• Experience in issuing and managing guarantees within the development space to mobilize additional capital and enhance financial inclusion is desired.
• Proven ability to think strategically and with innovation, including working across multidisciplinary groups, is desired.
• Experience in broad-based convening, dialogue processes, and partnership building is desired.
• Experience in working with and/or managing multi-cultural teams across geographies is desired.
• Full fluency in English and Arabic (written and spoken) is required.
• Fluency in French is an advantage.

Skills

• Development Finance
• Investment Structures
• Financial Sector Analysis
• Credit Guarantees
• Risk-sharing Instruments
• SME Finance
• Blended Finance Structuring
• Guarantee Management
• Financial Inclusion Knowledge
• Strategic Thinking
• Partnership Building
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Portfolio Development
• Regional Coordination
• Multicultural Team Leadership
• Working in Fragile Contexts
• Development Finance Institutions
• International Financial Institutions
• UN Investment Function

Languages

English, Arabic, French