Procurement Notices

Background Information

UNCDF is the UN’s capital investment agency for the world’s least developed countries (LDCs). It creates new opportunities for poor people and their communities by increasing access to inclusive finance and investment capital.  UNCDF focuses on Africa and the poorest countries of Asia and the Pacific, with a special commitment to countries emerging from conflict or crisis.  It can provide seed capital both grants and loans as well as technical support that will improve poor peoples’ lives.

The UNCDF digital agenda for migration and remittances falls within the organization’s broader global strategy, set forth in 2019, of “Leaving No One Behind in the Digital Era.” This vision is to empower millions of people by 2024 to use services daily that leverage innovation and technology and contribute to the UNs Sustainable Development Goals and Financing for Development Process as well as objectives set out by the G20 including most recently in the G20 Menu of Policy Options on Digital Transformation and Productivity Recovery. Through a market development approach, UNCDF continuously seeks to address underlying market dysfunctions. The Programme contributes to, and benefits from, this overarching corporate mandate. The Programme is administered by UNCDF with funding from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, or SDC, and Sida, the Swedish International Development Agency.

UNCDF’s Migration and Remittances for Development Programme, or the Programme, aims at contributing to sustainable development by making remittances more accessible and affordable, while helping build resilience for migrants and their families. For both sending and receiving countries, the Programme seeks to increase the share of migrant remittances flowing through formal channels, thereby giving policymakers at both ends greater visibility into the true picture of inbound and outbound financial flows and enabling better policy formulations. For remittances service providers, the Programme seeks to build the capacity to understand the financial needs and preferences of migrants and their families, and to design and deliver responsive products accordingly. For migrants themselves, the Programme aims not only to lower the costs and increase the safety and convenience of sending money, but also to link remittances to a broader suite of financial services—including insurance, savings, pensions, investments, and credit—that can help them reach their goals. The Programme recognizes digitization as the key to achieving these objectives.

UNCDF is pursuing an ambitious programme to leverage remittances’ full potential to contribute to sustainable development. With national governments, UNCDF is identifying which policies and regulations will allow remittance service providers to digitize and expand their outreach without exposing countries to illicit money flows or other financial risk. With the regional economic communities, UNCDF is working to harmonize cross-border strategies. With remittance service providers, UNCDF is building the capacity to understand migrants’ financial priorities, and design products accordingly. For providers of other financial services, UNCDF encourages design and delivery of value-added products (insurance, savings, credit) that could be layered onto digitized remittances. And for migrants themselves, UNCDF is encouraging greater financial and digital literacy–for them and their families back home–to move beyond cash and embrace the benefits that digitized remittances can deliver. UNCDF is convinced that remittances will never achieve their full potential unless gender dimensions are considered. Therefore, all aspects of the UNCDF Migration and Remittances Programme are informed by a systematic gender mainstreaming strategy.

The UNCDF strategy to promote digital economies that leave no one behind is structured along four interlinked workstreams that constitute our market development approach: (i) policy and regulations, (ii) open digital payment ecosystems, (iii) inclusive innovation and (iv) empowered customers. The Inclusive Innovation Framework harmonizes all four workstreams. Through the policy and regulations workstream, UNCDF acts as a neutral broker and works with governments at the country or regional level to enable a conducive policy and regulatory environment by strengthening their capacity in developing, supervising, and monitoring gender-responsive and risk-based remittances policies and regulations that further market competition and innovation while guarding against risks to financial stability. This includes support for the public sector and private sector to make informed policy decisions based on sex-disaggregated data and gender analysis.

UNCDF has already conducted policy and regulatory assessment in some of the receive countries, that include countries in the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) regions, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. UNCDF has also developed a Policy and Regulatory Assessment Guide that is intended to provide guidance to policymakers, regulators, and development partners for assessing existing remittance policy and regulatory frameworks to identify enablers and inhibitors in the context of remittance-related policy and regulatory reforms.

OBJECTIVES OF THE ASSIGNMENT

UNCDF is looking for a vendor or a consortium of vendors that will conduct extensive review and assessment of the remittance related policies and regulations impacting the flow of remittances, especially through digital channels from the send-side markets and some receive side countries.

The countries to be covered include:

• G20 countries (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States);  
• Non-G20 countries: Bahrain, Kuwait, New Zealand, Oman, Qatar, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand and United Arab Emirates.  
• Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) member countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Cote d'Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo).

SCOPE OF WORK

The scope of the consultancy service is to assess the current remittance policy and regulatory landscape of each of the 44 countries. The vendors are expected to conduct country reports and assessments aiming at identifying opportunities and barriers to the development of an enabling remittance policy and regulatory framework. The work is expected to achieve the following:

1. Assess the country’s political environment and financial services landscape, including gender gaps and drivers of those gender gaps. The political context can impact the remittance market of a given country or region. It can also influence the pace and likelihood of policy change.  Provide an overview of the financial services landscape in terms of the level of economic development and kinds of financial services available, as well as the ease of access to finance more broadly and the gender gaps specifically. An aspect of the financial services landscape assessment is how digitization has impacted the provision and uptake of financial services and how this differs for men and women, and why.
2. Assess the country’s financial services and remittance related policies, laws, and regulations, including gender gaps and drivers of those gaps. These may include but are not limited to, policies, rules and regulations pertaining to financial inclusion, central bank establishment, banking/financial institutions, microfinance institutions, national payments systems, telecommunications, anti-money laundering / combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT), remittance service providers, foreign exchange, data protection and privacy, national identification, consumer protection as it relates to financial services, and use of agents. Any legislation/regulation related to the digitization of financial services related to remittances, including fintech should be highlighted. Depending on the countries’ regime, the terminology used for the laws and regulations may differ from those given here.
3. Develop remittance related enablers, inhibitors, and options or recommendations for reform, including options and recommendations to improve or reform gender biases and close gaps. The enablers are factors that enhance remittances, ‘inhibitors’ are factors that limit remittances, and ‘options/recommendations’ are opportunities for consideration based on current circumstances. All these should be categorized in five aspects and formulated in a gender-responsive manner and using inclusive language, namely:
   1. Legal and regulatory framework – authorities, roles and responsibilities on cross-border remittances are well defined, and mechanisms for coordination are in place, including legal and regulatory conditions that support cross-border remittance. Financial and payments infrastructure – national payment system law that incorporates the concept of e-money allows non-banks to provide financial services including to issue e-money and fosters interoperability; national identification system that supports e-ID and ID requirements adjusted on a risk basis; and policies and regulations that advocate for a broad network of access points and offers a variety of interoperable access channels.
   2. Market aspects - that support cross-border remittance, especially on a foreign exchange regime that provides clear guidance; and mechanisms in place to capture remittance-related data at the transaction level and analyse and share it.
   3. Consumer protection - data protection and privacy laws that provide rules related to data protection, privacy and confidentiality for remittance-related data; and consumer protection law that provides clear guidance on consumer protection and complaints resolution mechanisms for financial services, including cross-border remittances; customer empowerment initiatives in place; disclosure requirements that ensure customers are well informed of the terms and conditions including costs, exchange rates, expected time of delivery and the amount to be received by the beneficiary.
   4. Cooperation and collaboration - efforts that support cross-border remittance including memorandums of understanding (MOUs) or any bilateral (or multilateral) agreements for seamless cooperation; public–private collaboration mechanisms on matters related to development and implementation of cross-border remittance policies, laws and regulations; and regional bodies that coordinate regional initiatives, and mechanism of coordinating and implementing policy issues at regional level.
4. Develop a Remittance Policy and Regulatory Reference Guides that assembles key considerations for policy makers, financial regulators, and other stakeholders in the remittance policy and regulatory environment in one place.

Drawing on the insights gathered during the assessment of remittance related policy and regulatory framework across the countries completed so far (30 countries across Africa and Asia), the reference guide must be designed as a practical guide that offers an overview of the key issues facing the remittance ecosystem, its perspectives, and signpost for remittance regulatory best practices benchmarked. The reference guide should also consider issues related to gender and consumer protection.

For full details, please see the Request for Proposal and related documents, attached.