**Senior Operations Officer, Climate Lead - LAC Region**
**Job #**:
- req29575**Organization**:
- IFC**Sector**:
- Advisory Services**Grade**:
- GG**Term Duration**:
- 3 years 0 months**Recruitment Type**:
- International Recruitment**Location**:
- Sao Paulo,Brazil**Required Language(s)**:
- English, Portuguese**Preferred Language(s)**:
- Spanish**Closing Date**:
- 10/9/2024 (MM/DD/YYYY) at 11:59pm UTC**Description**
IFC has embarked on an ambitious new growth strategy to stimulate more investment activity, especially in Low Income Countries (LICs) and Fragile and Conflict affected Situations (FCS). This strategy calls for generating our own opportunities by proactively working "Upstream" to create, deepen, and expand markets and to imagine, design and implement investment projects. It requires taking a systematic approach to understanding the sector bottlenecks that prevent the flow of private capital into productive investment in our member countries and addressing these bottlenecks through World Bank Group engagement on policy reforms and programmatic interventions at the country and sector level. It also requires capacity to leverage WBG programs and projects to develop our own proactive sector interventions and to imagine and design projects even in the absence of reforms.
The Financial Institutions Group (FIG) is one of the major industry groups at IFC, responsible for managing roughly 40% of IFC's overall business in terms of volume and capital at risk. FIG engages in a wide range of sub-sectors including Climate, Microfinance, SME, Gender, Capital Markets, Housing, Distressed Assets, and other areas, with both investment and advisory services delivered to IFC's clients through IFC's global network.
The Climate business is one of the strategic priorities of the WBG. IFC has set itself a very ambitious climate action plan and target - including energy efficiency, renewable energy, cleaner production and resource efficiency, waste and wastewater management, and green buildings - and has committed that 100% of all investments will be Paris aligned by 2025. To contribute to those targets, FIG has already quadrupled its climate finance investments over the last three years, working with FIs to scale up their financing of climate friendly projects. The focus is to support IFC's client banks and non-bank financial institutions build viable and scalable climate finance operations, leveraging capital markets as well as their client base and partnerships with real market and government players to promote Paris Alignment objectives.
The FIG LAC Upstream (US) and Advisory (AS) Unit seeks to create opportunities for new private sector led investments in the region by developing a pipeline of investment-ready opportunities made possible using distinct tools and interventions, including investment structuring, and advisory. The objective of the unit will be to enhance the next generation of FIG investments across priority sectors in the region that promote net zero/decarbonization national strategies.
IFC is seeking an US and AS Climate Lead for its Financial Institutions Group in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), responsible for the delivery of integrated investment, upstream and advisory solutions in climate finance. This will be done in close collaboration with the Industry Managers for LAC, to ensure high-impact upstream and advisory services projects that create new investment opportunities in climate finance; with a particular focus on defining new capital markets structures and asset classes. This specifically involves 1) incubating high impact projects and initiatives that require upstream project development to reach the point of investment and 2) getting potential clients ready for IFC climate related investment through advisory services engagement; particularly as it relates to climate risk given IFC's Paris Alignment commitments.
**ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES**
The US/AS Climate Lead will have a range of evolving responsibilities in line with climate related strategic priorities of FIG LAC. Anticipated scope of duties and responsibilities during the assignment include the following:
- Lead the design and implementation of FIG US/AS climate projects and develop a strong pipeline of quality climate investment opportunities for IFC by employing knowledge and experience of financial markets, climate market trends and industry standards - such as Paris Alignment.
- Ensure the design and implementation of new FIG US/AS high-quality climate finance project pipeline, in collaboration with the FIG investment team to ensure strong alignment with the FIG investment and Paris Alignment strategies, WBG and IFC regional and country strategies and IFC ESG standards.
- Identify game-changing regulatory reform, business models and trends that can present opportunities for new climate related capital market structures and asset classes; including business models leveraging digital inno