Executive, Financial Services Development Impact

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

Role purpose 

• BII’s Development Impact team is market-leading and provides technical leadership to assess, manage and evaluate the impact of our investments. BII’s objective is to push the boundaries in impact management within a world-class impact framework based on the Impact Management Project’s consensus and the Operating Principles for Impact Management.  

• Our impact professionals work side-by-side with our investment teams to actively manage the impact of every investment we make. This approach is designed to create deals teams with the professional capability and expertise to reflect our mandate to improve people’s lives, protect the planet and make a financial return.  

• BII has a longstanding commitment to financial services. We have a portfolio of over $2bn invested in financial services across more than 150 investees which represents about one third of BII’s total portfolio by value. Over the last three years, the team has deployed $1b+ across Africa and South Asia and has ambitious deployment targets for the coming years.  

Responsibilities 

In this role you will be responsible for delivering high-quality impact management within the Financial Services Group. Your primary focus will be to lead the impact management work for our Debt product, but depending on business needs you may also contribute towards our other three FSG products (i.e. Equity, Intermediated Financial Services and Trade & Supply Chain Finance). You will play an active role in providing development impact inputs throughout the deal cycle in order to deepen the impact on people and planet.  Specific responsibilities will be driven by the candidate’s experience and team need/priorities, but are expected to include the following: 

Delivering impact management for the relevant part of the portfolio: 

• Assessing development impact as part of the due diligence process. Working seamlessly with investment team colleagues to inform investment decision-making, define the impact objectives and appropriately escalating issues. 

• Developing a high-quality development impact dashboard for each investment which will involve desk research, facilitating discussions, due diligence and managing external suppliers where necessary. Liaise with other Impact Group teams (e.g. ESG-I, Climate Change and Gender/Diversity) during the investment process where relevant. 

• Defining the monitoring plan pre-investment and collecting impact metrics to track actual impact post-investment, always 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 learning to the investment team and the broader organisation. 

• Actively managing investments to enhance the impact by participating in the design and implementation of initiatives and partnerships. 

• Developing and delivering impact strategies and tools (e.g. benchmarks) ensuring consistency with BII-wide strategies and frameworks. 

Relationship and representation: 

• Focal point for the FSG Debt investment team, representing development impact in relevant meetings. 

• Engagement with investees on impact management activities. 

• Ensuring appropriate communication of priorities, changes to processes and frameworks to investment teams. 

• Manage sector-specific relationships including with experts, peers and suppliers. 

Support and contribute to the wider Development Impact team: 

• Supporting the continual development of BII’s impact management framework ensuring tools, systems, policies and capabilities remain world class, led by our central Impact Management Team. 

• Supporting other team members to ensure all activities within the sector are consistent with our sector approach. You may have formal line management responsibilities for more junior colleagues.  

• Developing the overall team capability and effectiveness through sharing learnings within the team, the broader Impact Group and the wider organisation.   

The candidate 

Background 

• Strong work experience in a relevant field, preferably as an impact manager within an investment or development finance setting.  

• Knowledge of the financial services sector is desirable, including relevant topics such as capital markets development, customer protection principles, sustainability bonds and directed lending.   

• Strong academic credentials. Preferably a Master’s degree in economics, MBA 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. 

• 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. 

• 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 tasks and taking decisions with imperfect information.  

• Good knowledge and network of third parties in the impact management and measurement space who can be leveraged to help deliver enhanced impact with our investee companies. 

• Proven capability of effective teamwork and strong stakeholder/relationship management. 

• The role will require regular travel, mostly within Africa and South Asia. 

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  

BII 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 or sexual orientation.