Senior Investment Officer at the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) Full Time

Job Title: Senior Investment Officer

Position Number: 50053476
Location: Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire
Position Grade: PL5

The Complex

• The Vice Presidency for Finance oversees the financial management of the Bank Group.
• This encompasses the Bank Group’s treasury activities including borrowings from the capital markets and investment activities; controllership functions including financial reporting and loan administration; strategic resource mobilization and the strengthening of the non-statutory financial resources and instruments; the overall asset / liability management for the Bank Group.

The Hiring Department:

• The Treasury Department is responsible for raising funds from capital markets, managing and investing the Bank Group’s liquidity and shareholders’ funds, processing and settling all financial transactions and managing the institution’s banking relationships.

The Position

• The Senior Investment Officer will be responsible for managing multiple fixed income investment portfolios for several entities of the African Development Bank Group.

Key Functions
Under the supervision and guidance of the Division Manager, Investments, the Principal Investment Officer will perform the following:

Portfolio Management:

• Manages the Bank Group’s assets in its liquid currencies with the objective of capital preservation, profitability, and liquidity maintenance according to the investment guidelines of each specific entity by executing transactions in securities and derivatives such as swaps and futures; identify and execute investment and trading opportunities within risk parameters.
• Manages the cash collateral portfolios by ensuring the investment of cash received as credit support in short-dated instruments with the objective of covering the financial costs.
• Executes the Bank’s short-term funding strategy by issuing European Commercial Papers to cover short-term liquidity gaps, posting regular levels for European Commercial Papers to increase the visibility of the Bank and assessing other alternative short-term funding options such as repo transactions.
• Contributes to the credit analysis process by ensuring that specific issuers / counterparties are assessed to ensure their creditworthiness.
• Contributes to the selection process for external portfolio managers by assessing proposals; reviews external portfolio managers’ activities to ensure adequate management of the Bank’s assets by conducting regular meetings and reviewing performance reports.

Financial Policies:

• Contributes to the formulation and reviews the African Development Bank Group’s financial policies by making appropriate policy recommendation to Senior Management, the Board and Asset and Liability Committee; participates in the review of other financial policies including borrowing and currency management policies by providing feedback to proposals from other Divisions.
• Ensures that Process manuals of the Division are up-to-date by contributing to their periodic review.

Market Intelligence & Reporting:

• Monitors political, economic and market developments and assess their implication for the Bank’s assets and investment strategy. Monitors Central Banks activities to assess developments in their monetary policies and their implication for interest rate trends and the formulation the investment strategy for the Bank’s Investment Portfolio.
• Keeps Division Manager and Treasurer up-to-date on the investment strategy and developments in the financial markets by (i) providing regular updates at Strategy Meetings and through notes, (ii) responding to information requests from the Treasurer, Asset and Liability Committee, the Board, and the rest of the Bank, (iii) producing monthly and quarterly reports presenting performance results and market developments (iv) producing weekly economic and bond market reports prepared by the division.

Advisory & Capacity Building:

• Provides technical assistance to other divisions in areas of risk hedging, fixed income trading, and valuation of bonds and derivatives by reviewing reports produced by other divisions and responding to specific technical requests.
• Designs courses and programs targeted at senior management, middle managers and officers of Central banks and other financial institutions.

Analytics, Models and System Development:

• Contributes to the development of analytics tools in the team to improve the team’s capacity to capture and monitor risks; such improvements include the implementation of portfolio analytical tools, such as Profit and Loss attribution analysis, cash flow projections analysis.
• Contribute to key system development projects designed to improve operational efficiency; Examples include the functional testing of the deployment of Straight-Through Processing and electronic trading platforms.

Business Continuity:

• Execute foreign exchange and money market transactions in the absence of the foreign exchange or money market trader.

Competencies (Skills, Experience and Knowledge)

• Hold at least a Master’s Degree in Finance, Economics, Mathematics, Statistics or another relevant quantitative discipline. Relevant professional certification such as Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) or ICMA is a plus.
• Have a minimum of five (5) years of relevant and practical experience in International Capital Markets in general and with special emphasis on active management of complex fixed income portfolios.
• Strong knowledge and understanding of financial instruments, particularly bonds, structured products, derivatives, and risk management concepts; Proven credit analysis and financial modelling skills; strong numeracy skills.
• Experience in exercising a related/similar function in another Multilateral Development Banks, investment bank or top tiers asset managers.
• Private sector experience will be an added advantage.
• Ability to communicate effectively (written and oral) in English or French, preferably with a working knowledge of the other language.
• Demonstrate a strong work ethic.
• Good knowledge of the use of standard software (Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, and web tools); Excel VBA programming skills is desirable.
• Hands-on experience with Treasury systems such as Bloomberg is required; Hands-on experience with Summit and Numerix is advantageous.

Application Closing Date
3rd December, 2021.

Note: This position is classified international recruitment and attracts international terms and conditions of employment.