Associate/Executive, Infrastructure and Climate 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

Over 75 years supporting sustainable business growth in developing and emerging markets

More than £8.8 billion in net assests

1,400+ businesses invested in

950,000 workers in the businesses we support 

650+ people in our diverse global team

3 key development objectives: Productive | Sustainable | Inclusive

Team and role overview

BII’s Development Impact Management team is market-leading and provides technical leadership to assess, manage and evaluate the impact of our investments BII objective is to push the boundaries in impact management within a world-class impact framework to deliver productive, sustainable and inclusive impact across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. We take an active approach to impact management, utilising a framework aligned with the Operating Principles for Impact Management and we are recognised as a Practice Leader in impact management by BlueMark.

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 deal 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’s operations are structured around 3 sector groups (1) Infrastructure & Climate (I&C) (2) Financial Services (FS) (3) Industries, Technology and Services (ITS). Across these sector groups, we invest in companies which are aligned to our strategic impact objectives: to invest to achieve productive, sustainable and inclusive development. This position will be sitting in our I&C Group.

Responsibilities  

You will play an active role in providing development impact inputs  for I&C investments 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 I&C 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

Background

• Prior work experience and in-depth knowledge of Infrastructure and Climate investing, with some working understanding of development impact at BII.
• Strong academic credentials. Preferably a Master’s degree in economics, Development Economics or equivalent analytical post graduate degree.

Skills

• Some practical understanding of impact management, private sector development and how to achieve development outcomes through investment.
• 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.
• 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.

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.