Innovative Finance Executive, Private Capital Mobilisation

About BII

British International Investment is the UK’s development finance institution, owned by the UK Government. With a mission to solve the biggest global development challenges, we aim to create a virtuous circle of investment and impact. Your contribution will be essential. 

It won’t be easy: we do the hardest work in the most complex markets. Be prepared to test your skills, get creative and say your piece as you take on high-profile work as part of a diverse team of exceptionally smart, passionate people. 

In return, you can take your career to all-new places in a culture that rewards curiosity and collaboration, and balances high performance with wellbeing.

BII at a glance

75 years supporting sustainable business growth in developing and emerging markets

£8.1 billion in net assets

1,400+ businesses invested in

950,000 workers in the businesses we support

£9 billion in new investments planned in the next 5 years

600+ people in our diverse global team

3 key development objectives: Productive | Sustainable | Inclusive

Team and role overview

Mobilising commercial investors is an increasingly important part of development and climate finance.. This is true of all DFIs and MDBs – witness the ‘Bridgetown Initiative’ which aims to reform MDB funding architecture to significantly grow lending capacity. But for BII, a 100% balance sheet investor that has traditionally ‘bought-to-hold’ investments, the opportunities – and challenges, in stepping our mobilisation capabilities will be unique.

BII hasn’t always had a strong mobilisation focus. Between 2012-21, BII’s was on a journey to grow its own balance sheet - from investing c. $500m a year in 2012 to over $2.5bn in 2021 (and growing staff from 80 to over 500 in the same period). We did mobilise other investors along the way, but it was more incidental than part of a deliberate strategy.

In looking forward though, BII knows that our further ability to scale our impact will require working much more systematically with other sources of capital. And, given we now have significant origination potential across a broad suite of investment products, as well as a large existing portfolio, we have more options for how we can mobilise commercial investors than we did a few years ago. Over the past few years we have invested in mobilisation capabilities that include an Investor Desk to manage our relationships with commercial investors, and more recently the beginnings of a loan syndication and sales function.

We have now added a £100m concessional finance facility explicitly for the purpose of supporting at-scale mobilisation to our suite of mobilisation capabilities.

Purpose

The Innovative Finance Executive will play a key part of the execution of the new £100m, multi-year, concessional mobilisation facility (MF) at BII, as well as contribute to evolving design and learning from the facility

The purpose of the MF is to help BII bridge the ‘relative value gap’ between institutional investors’ risk-return appetite, and the risk-return profile of BII’s pipeline/portfolio, by offering a degree of risk mitigation beyond the level possible via BII’s core investments.

The MF is expected to use risk-mitigating products such as guarantees of different types (first-loss, second-loss, pari-passu) and subordinated debt to BII’s coinvestors. It is expected these products will be offered alongside BII’s core investments (known as our ‘Growth portfolio’) and such the MF will be an example of a ‘blended’ finance faciliy

The MF is particularly expected to support institutional investors – whose risk-return appetite is constrained by regulatory and/or capital adequacy frameworks, such as insurers (Solvency) and international banks (Basle). Consequently, at present, the deep capital pools represented by these investors struggle to connect to BII’s markets.

The initial focus of the MF is expected to be in climate infrastructure and especially in markets where the sovereign rating is one or two notches beneath investment-grade, but where climate infra projects have a track record of relatively low expected loss.  The MF may focus on other markets and asset classes in later stages.

The MF is part of a family of 3 concessional finance facilities being established at BII. The other facilities are the Climate Innovation Facility (CIF - operational since 2022) and a forthcoming Low Income Country Facility. The CIF and the Low Income Facility aim to support BII to invest in more nascent markets and for enhanced development impact, with mobilisation as a more incidental objective.

Responsibilities

The Innovative Finance Executive will be responsible for:

Structuring MF eligible transactions

• Collaborating with BII investment teams to identify transactions that would qualify for using the Mobilisation Facility. Qualifying transactions will need to have an intent to mobilise a multiple of capital from commercial coinvestors, that would not otherwise be possible but for the availability of concessional capital and risk mitigation provided the Mobilisation Facility
• Bringing knowledge and insight of commercial investors’ risk-return-impact appetite and the degree to which they can set their own appetite (e.g. asset owners) or are executing a 3rd party mandate (e.g. asset managers) and/or operating within external regulatory parameters (such as capital adequacy frameworks). This knowledge and insight will extend to understanding the regulatory frameworks themselves, and the role that external agencies’ ratings play in calibrating their use in practise.
• Bring understanding of the array of possible investment structures to mitigate risk (or enhance return, or both) for institutional investors, and their differences in terms of extent of implied subsidy, degree of alignment between investing parties, and capital efficiency for the MF and BII.
• Advise on the right investment structure to bring commercial investors into the transaction with minimum subsidy, maximum alignment between parties, and maximum capital efficiency.

Finalising, maintaining and promoting MF design

• Complete any outstanding areas of MF design (year 1 only) and document in a MF ‘playbook’ for BII teams. Help to socialise and drive understanding of the MF around BII teams, e.g. through internal roadshows.
• Thereafter maintain and update MF design and playbook, drawing on both BIIs experience of using the MF (and other concessional finance facilities), and external experience of using concessional finance for the purposes of mobilisation

Support MF governance and reporting

• Advise BII investment teams on the appropriate approvals processes, stages and workstreams
• Be a point of contact for the Mobilisation Facility-designated IC member (cogniscant of the difference between the Innovative Finance Officer’s ‘first-line of defence’ role and the IC members’ ‘second-line of defence’role)
• Contribut to BII’s Board and Shareholder reporting across its various concessional finance facilities

Support institutional learning and development of a BII innovative finance community

• Draw and document the learnings from BII’s experience of operating the Mobilisation Facility, and iteratively feed them into MF design (see above)
• Be part of a BII innovative finance community, including close cooperation and two-way learning with the Innovative Finance Officers working on the CIF and LIC facilities
• Represent BII externally in Innovative Finance and/or mobilisation-focused discussions

The candidate

Background, skills, aptitude

The ideal candidate will have a background in structuring innovative blended finance solutions for impact and/or mobilisation, gained in an emerging market context.

Essential skills and aptitudes include:

• extensive structuring experience working across a range of asset classes and investment instruments e.g. debt and equity, single-asset .v. pooled structures etc.
• experience of impact investment, innovative finance, structured solutions, hybrid/cross-asset product development
• first class communication skills, both written and verbal at all levels and in all settings including up to C-suite and board level
• proven influencing skills, an ability to work across teams, a ‘low-ego’ approach, and be collaborative in nature
• strong project management skills and ability to organise workflow

Other desirable skills and experience include

• Experience of international development or of working in or with emerging market assets will be a significant bonus
• An existing network among institutional investors especially any emerging market credit and/or impact investing componanet.
• Ability to bring analysis, data and fresh insights to problem-solving, but to balance this with a pragmatic and realistic approach to shaping recommendations

You will be strongly motivated by BII’s development mission and able to demonstrate commitment to development or social goals through previous executive or non-executive activity

Our cultural values

We look for team members who aspire, as we do, to work at our best and to be:

• Impact-led, commercially rigorous
• Tenacious in the face of challenges
• Collaborative and caring

British International Investment is committed to diversity and inclusion and welcomes all applicants regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation or educational background.