Job Description
This is an excellent opportunity to contribute to the efficiency of UN financial operations by supporting the implementation of a consolidated treasury service. The position offers exposure to international financial transactions, collaboration with various UN agencies, and professional development in treasury management within the UN system.
The Finance Group (FG) is a critical and strategic business function in UNOPS and serves as an authoritative and integrated partner in the organization on strategic financial planning and budgeting, business strategy and practices, financial analysis and risk assessment, financial management services and long term organisational treasury and investments. As the steward of resources of a self-financing UN entity, FG is accountable for timely cost recovery and reporting to partners, maintaining the integrity and transparency of financial management of resources in accordance with the highest standards of ethics and organisational/international accountability framework and the accurate and transparent financial reporting to governing bodies, clients, partners and stakeholders.
In line with the UN High-Level Committee on Management (HLCM)’s request for far-reaching efficiency measures across various functional areas, the UNOPS Finance Group developed an initiative to allow consolidating treasury services across interested UN agencies, funds, and programs (AFPs), using UNOPS’ current Treasury and IT architecture focusing specifically on providing services related to Cash Management and Payments via an In-house Bank (IHB) set up using POBO (Payments on Behalf Of).
The Finance Associate IHB is a newly created key support role reporting to the IBH Lead. The role holder will mainly coordinate the management of inquiries from participating UN AFPs, monitor and support payment execution, perform payment investigation, manage intercompany account reconciliation. The Finance Associate IHB may also be responsible for supervising IHB Assistants. The incumbent will work in close collaboration with the IHB Lead, with the payment factory and bank reconciliation teams of the Bangkok Shared Service Centre (BSSC), and other teams of the Finance Group (FG) as needed.
1. Management and oversight on partner/customer inquiries
- Ensure timely response and resolution to any inquiries from partners.
- Proactively inform partners on delays, rejections, or potentials to increase payment success rates.
- Maintain a solid working relationship between UNOPS and its partners.
- Ensure awareness of important issues through escalation to IHB Lead and other stakeholders.
- Assist in onboarding of new partners/customers.
2. Inquiries and investigations on transactions
- Monitor the Treasury Management System (TMS) and other channels for failed or delayed payments.
- Perform and assist on investigations of (failed) payments through inquiries to banks, investigations on bank platforms, and other tools.
- Facilitate timely and effective resolution of failed payments, if needed through alternative channels.
- Assist in and oversee the management of incoming funding from partners, or collections from third parties.
- Work closely with the developers, IHB Lead, and other colleagues to resolve any technical issues related to payments as soon as possible.
3. Processing and oversight on payments
- Ensure the timely execution of payments on behalf of participating partners through continuous monitoring and control.
- Where required, assist other units on the execution of manual or automated payment instructions to banks through the Treasury Management System (TMS), banking and payment portals, or other channels.
- Where required, act as approver in UNOPS’ systems (ERP and TMS), or on bank platforms.
- Escalation of issues to IHB Lead
4. Reconciliation, balancing, and reporting on intercompany accounts
- Ensure timely and accurate reconciliation of intercompany flows to ensure up to date and correct balances of AFPs’ funds held at UNOPS.
- Assist in the execution of internal FX transactions to ensure intercompany account funding in local currency is sufficient.
- Assist in the recording of bank fees, service fees, and other flows against intercompany accounts.
- Assist in the preparation of statements and reports to partners.
- Assist the BSSC bank reconciliation team in relation to IHB flows where required.
5. Knowledge management & innovation
- Provide support and motivation enabling the supervised team to deliver results, effectively managing their performance and providing learning and development opportunities as appropriate
- Provide oversight, ensuring compliance by team members with existing policies and best practices with support of the IHB lead.
- Organize, facilitate and/or deliver training and learning initiatives for personnel on Finance related topics.
- Contribute to Financial management knowledge networks and communities of practice by providing a collaborative synthesis of lessons learnt and dissemination of best practices in financial management.
- Collect feedback, ideas, and internal knowledge about processes and best practices and utilise them productively.
- Maintain the IHB Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) as required to align with policies and best practices.
