ToR – Access to Finance Expert at Spark

About SPARK

SPARK is a not-for-profit, non-political NGO with headquarters in Amsterdam and field offices in South East Europe, Africa, and the MENA region.

SPARK develops higher education and entrepreneurship to empower young, ambitious people to lead their fragile and conflict-affected societies into prosperity. SPARK is a dynamic and growing, international not-for-profit development organisation with 80+ staff members, in more than 14 offices around the world. SPARK supports refugees in the Middle East by providing them with scholarships in universities and higher education institutions in the region. SPARK also supports young entrepreneurs in fragile states, to start or grow their own businesses*.*

Description of Responsibilities

SPARK Jordan is seeking an expert to design and provide technical leadership to activities that will support small and medium size enterprises (SME) in accessing and competing in domestic, regional, and international markets. Through its market-driven interventions the project will support growth towards employment opportunities and incentivize investment in business service provision and market infrastructure. Preference is given to those with previous private sector experience and advanced degrees. This position requires fluency in English and local and/or regional experience.

The Access to Finance Expert will build the capacity SMEs to develop bankable applications for business loans and access short to long-term financing. He/she will work with SMEs to ensure their compliance and quality of loan applications.

The national expert should have a bachelor’s degree in finance, accounting, business administration, or economics and at least 5 – 10 years of professional experience in banking, and must provide at least 3 work references indicating the deliverables and accomplishments.

Any potential applicants should develop a comprehensive Technical and Financial Proposal that showcases their methodology, and work approaches towards achieving the specified deliverables of this ToR.

As the national consultant, he/she will work the local office team to support the companies that benefit from our programmes. The national expert will be responsible for carrying out the following tasks:

1. Conduct 100 diagnostic assessments/audits per company to assess their capacity to access credit
2. Identify potential points of improvement for 100 MSMEs in order to enhance their capacity to access financial instruments
3. Ensure at least 50 MSME’s apply and access financial instruments

Minimum Experience Required:

• 5 -10 years’ experience in the financial services sector, including at least 5 years in SME lending
• Experience with formal and informal finance
• Jordanian National