RFP-AFI-2022-021 Consultation for the Scoping Study & Development of Appropriate Tool to Monitor Gender Policy Implementation

  • Contractor
  • Pakistan
  • TBD USD / Year
  • Alliance for Financial Inclusion profile




  • Job applications may no longer being accepted for this opportunity.


Alliance for Financial Inclusion

1. Background

The Alliance for Financial Inclusion

The Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) is the world’s leading organization on financial inclusion policy and regulation. Currently, nearly 100 member institutions make up the AFI network including central banks, ministries of finance and other financial policymaking or regulatory institutions from over 85 developing countries and emerging markets. AFI empowers policymakers to increase the access and usage of quality financial services for the underserved through sustainable and inclusive policies and an effective use of digital technologies.

Policies developed and implemented by the members of the Alliance contribute to a range of the Sustainable Development Goals. by Setting their own agenda, AFI members harness the power of peer learning to develop practical and tested policy reforms that enhance financial inclusion with strategic support from both public and private sector partners.

AFI has 7 Working Groups (WGs): Consumer Empowerment and Market Conduct Working Group (CEMCWG), Digital Financial Services Working Group (DFSWG), Financial Inclusion Data Working Group (FIDWG), Financial Inclusion Strategy Peer Learning Group (FISPLG), Global Standards Proportionality Working Group (GSPWG), Inclusive Green Finance Working Group (IGFWG) and SME Finance Working Group (SMEFWG).

As the key source of policy developments and trends in financial inclusion and as the primary mechanism for generating and incubating technical content in the network, the Working Groups serve as “communities of practice”. Providing a platform for knowledge exchange and peer learning among policymakers to share, deliberate and deepen their understanding, the working groups offer leadership and expertise in their respective policy fields and support the network to monitor new developments in emerging fields.

The knowledge generated via the working groups is disseminated for implementation by a range of capacity building activities such as Joint Learning Programs, Member Trainings, Trainings by Private Sector Partners. The practical experience members garner from engaging in peer learning based capacity building is then applied by members as in country implementation projects which are supported by the provision of financial or technical support to AFI member institutions in conducting activities that aim to deliver financial inclusion policies, regulations, supervisory tools or enablers for the development of policies, such as national financial inclusion strategies

The working groups receive strategic guidance and insight from the High-Level Global Standards & Policy Committee, while the Gender Inclusive Finance Committee, supports WGs in integrating gender considerations into all aspects of their work and support members in fulfilling their Denarau Action Plan (2016) commitment to promote women’s financial inclusion.

AFI members have made further commitments in a range of other accords which can be read here.

The AFI’s five regional initiatives support policy implementation in Africa (AfPI), Latin America and the Caribbean (FILAC), the Pacific Islands (PIRI), Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECAPI) and the Arab Region (FIARI).

2. Project Background:

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has a long-standing association with AFI. As a principal member of AFI, SBP is member of several working groups and has participated actively in various policy forums and conferences. SBP has now received technical assistance and a grant under AFI’s In-country Implementation (ICI) Support Program, to implement the Banking on Equality Policy (BoE).

The BoE Policy has been developed to promote women’s financial inclusion by prioritizing a gender-specific focus in the financial sector. The goal of the policy is to engender equality in banking and reduce the gender gap in financial inclusion. The policy identifies five key pillars under which actions are targeted towards improving institutional readiness namely:

  • Product diversification and development capability.
  • Customer acquisition and facilitation approaches towards the different women’s market segments.
  • Robust collection and analysis of sex-disaggregated data.
  • Prioritizing a gender focus in SBP’s policies; and
  • Establishing a Policy Forum on Gender at SBP.

AFI’s technical and grant support is focused on the implementation of the BoE. The support is classified into two areas namely i) technical support under which AFI’s internal support and consultancies will be provided, and ii) a grant support for knowledge sharing/peer learning country visits. Further, as part of the technical support, one of the initiatives is to undertake a scoping study to identify members awarding women-friendly certification to national financial institutions

Under the fifth pillar of the BoE policy, SBP will evaluate the performance of the banks that have made significant efforts to better serve the various segments of the women’s market with product and services that more effectively meet their needs. Therefore, in order to gauge the performance of financial institutions on basis of parameters set under BoE policy, SBP with the support of AFI intends to “Develop a comprehensive gender marker that will help SBP issue ‘Women-friendly’ certifications to national financial institutions.” The certification will be based on a comprehensive analysis of achievements in-line with measures/actions and specific headline targets specified in BoE policy and subsequent instructions to FIs.

Since the launch of BOE policy in September 2021, banks have started taking measures to ensure that the objectives of BOE policy are met in both letter and spirit. For this purpose, in addition to the policy document, SBP had issued a policy circular listing the steps required of financial institutions for implementation of the policy. In order to track progress and support the policy’s implementation, SBP requires a robust monitoring framework which will help in gauging the performance of the financial sector against the policy actions.

The goal of this scoping study is to identify countries that are monitoring their financial institutions’ performance in regard to serving the various segments of the women’s market, to learn about their approaches and aid in the development of an performance accountability tool that will help SBP in assessing how well financial institutions are utilizing a gender lens in their operations and business practices. This tool will then be used to recognize and reward each institution’s efforts and set a standard of excellence for other institutions to follow.

3. Objective:

The objectives of this project are to:

  1. Build a knowledge base of international best practices on approaches and frameworks that can be adopted to recognise financial institutions that are contributing to the implementation of BoE framework.
  2. Use that knowledge to develop a mechanism for measuring and monitoring the level of contribution of financial institutions in Pakistan to the implementation of BoE

4. Project Scope of Work:

The following are the project’s scope of work:

  1. Conduct a desk-top review to identify countries that are certifying financial institutions, as acknowledgement for their efforts in developing and providing products and services suitable for women, and how such certifications are impacting on financial institutions policies and strategies as well as customer perceptions and employee motivation/retention
  2. Identify the key parameters that can be used to measure the contribution of financial institutions to gender inclusive finance, based on international best practice.
  3. Conduct an assessment of how each of the BOE Policy’s pillars is contributing towards increasing women’s financial inclusion and propose weightage of each pillar that can contribute to the overall score when assessing a FI for certification.
  4. Design a standardized monitoring tool to evaluate financial institution’s performance against peers, which can be customized if needed, as well as a monitoring dashboard to aggregate results from all participating institutions.
  5. Prepare and present a report and PowerPoint presentation on key insights, findings, and recommendations.

5. Key Deliverables and Activities:

The consultant is expected to deliver the following:

Deliverable 01: One Landscape report on countries that are certifying financial institutions, as acknowledgement for their efforts in developing and providing products and services suitable for women, and how such certifications are impacting on financial institutions policies and strategies as well as customer perceptions and employee motivation/retention. The landscape report should also cover the list of additional parameters beyond the BoE policy framework that are used in other geographies to evaluate the women friendly certification.

Deliverable 02: One Assessment Report on how each of the BOE Policy’s pillars is contributing towards increasing women’s financial inclusion and propose weightage of each pillar that can contribute to the overall score when assessing a FI for certification I.

Deliverable 03: Design one standardized monitoring tool to evaluate financial institution’s performance against peers, which can be customized if needed, as well as a monitoring dashboard to aggregate results from all participating institutions.

Deliverable 04: One consolidated report and PowerPoint presentation on key insights, findings, and recommendations.

6. Timeline:

This work would be carried out between July 2022 to August 2022.

Refer link in ‘How to Apply’ section for more detailed information.

7. Consultant Experience:

The consultant firm undertaking this assignment should have the following qualifications:

  • Advanced degree in a field related to Economics, Public Policy, International
  • Development or another related discipline.
  • Minimum 7 years of professional experience with proven competence in strategy formulation and implementation in the financial sector and related areas.
  • Minimum 5 years of specific experience in the fields of financial inclusion, gender equality and international development, with an emphasis on the Pakistani context
  • Previous experience working with global and/or national institutions involved in financial inclusion and gender inclusive finance policy and regulation, particularly in developing and emerging countries.
  • Previous experience in gender sensitive/transformative data gathering and analysis
  • Extensive research experience in countries in the developing and emerging economies.
  • A track record of publication in the fields of financial inclusion, gender equality, international development.
  • Fluency in English (oral and writing) is compulsory.
  • Excellent written and presentation skills in the English language.

8. Travel:

This consultancy work is a home-based work. No regional/international travelling is required.

9. Proposal Submission Information:

Proposals will be due with the following requirements for submission:

Submission Deadline:

10 June 2022

Documents to be submitted with Annexure 1 and 2:

Firm

  • Company Registration.
  • Company Profile.
  • List of previous or current clientele on similar work.
  • Proposal (if any besides Annexure 1);
  • Working papers/writing sample or research relevant to this assignment.

Method of Submission:

By email to AFI’s Procurement & Contracts Office at

[email protected]

Submission of Technical and Financial:

Kindly submit the followings:

1. Using the template/format given in Annexure 1 (Technical) and Annexure 2 (Financial) and/or additional technical proposal for more information.

2. Technical and Financial proposal must be separated in different pdf.

3. Financial proposals must be USD only. Whereas for Malaysian applicants with Business Registration under Suruhanjaya Syarikat Malaysia (SSM), please submit your financial proposals in MYR.

4. Proposal to be submitted to the designated email address.

5. AFI does not tolerate copyright infringement, including but not limited to infringement, in the form of plagiarism. Consultant or Consulting entity awarded a contract by AFI shall take responsibility to ensure that the authored works, produced in parts or as an entirety of the deliverables stated in this RFP does not infringe on copyrights.

AFI reserve the right to disqualify incomplete submission, overlapping submission, non-compliance to the above requirements. Notification of results will only be sent to shortlisted candidates upon completion.

10. Reporting:

Throughout the contract period, the Consultant will be reporting to AFI Team, Head of Gender Inclusive Finance.

11. Criteria for Evaluation

Refer link in ‘How to Apply’ section for more detailed information.

Evaluation of technical and financial proposals

The evaluation and decision on the best proposal will be made based on the combined criterion, where companies are qualified by means of a score that takes into account the combined valuation of the technical and financial proposals, with the following weights:

a) Technical Proposal: 70% (Seventy percent).

b) Financial Proposal: 30% (Thirty percent).

How to apply

Interested applicants are expected to submit a proposal with an updated CV and using the template given (Download the RFP document here) by email to AFI’s Procurement & Contracts Office at [email protected] by 10th Jun 2022.

Note: AFI does not tolerate copyright infringement, including and not limited to infringement, in the form of plagiarism. Consultant or consulting entity awarded a contract by AFI shall take responsibility to ensure that the authored works, produced in parts or as an entirety of the deliverables stated in this RFP does not infringe on copyrights.

The final decision on the selection of a consultant/consulting firm for this project rests with AFI management team and with the Inquiry. Only shortlisted and successful consultants will be contacted.


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