Manager, Product and Business Development

About Accion

Accion is a global nonprofit committed to creating a financially inclusive world, with a trailblazing legacy in microfinance and fintech impact investing. We catalyze financial service providers to deliver high-quality, affordable solutions at scale for the 1.8 billion people who are left out of, or poorly served by, the financial sector. For more than 60 years, Accion has helped tens of millions of people through our work with more than 200 partners in 63 countries. More at http://www.accion.org.

About Global Advisory Solutions (GLAS)

GLAS is Accion´s Advisory Solutions team. We are a diverse and close-knit global team with one common social purpose: building a financially inclusive world for small businesses and low-income households.  We are passionate about what we do – working with a wide range of financial service providers and other partners across the world to create to build sustainable businesses to achieve financial inclusion.  We enjoy solving problems, being exposed to new ideas, sharing information, and asking, “what if?”.

Ovante

Ovante was created by GLAS as an in-housed web platform built to scale across Latin America. The end users of Ovante are microentrepreneurs who can access the platform directly from their cellphone or desktop. The platform consists of 17different topics around managerial, financial, and digital skill building and guides its users through the different course contents, introducing incentives for them to finish each topic, and providing them with tools to apply concepts learned on Ovante in their day-to-day businesses. Ovante aims to not only provide business concepts once, but to maintain an ongoing dialogue with entrepreneurs to support the evolution of their businesses and help guide them in accessing financial services from which they could benefit. Ovante help users to have easier access to credit by providing financial services providers with alternative data that can be used to complement a credit assessment and increase the chances of Ovante´s users to get a loan.

Position Summary

Accion is seeking a visionary leader, with a commercial mindset and passion for social change to lead the scale up and go-to-market phase of Ovante in Latin America. This work includes developing and implementing the product strategy, managing the online platform, and scaling the product regionally through both a B2C approach via digital marketing channels as well as a B2B approach, sourcing institutional clients to integrate Ovante into their customer service offering. Ovante Manager will need to be adept in managing a digital product from end-to-end and understand low-income populations and their financial capability needs. Problem solving, positive attitude, teamwork, and eagerness to challenge the status quo are key skills for the position.

The person in this role will be based in Bogota, Colombia.

Position Responsibilities

Lead the product consolidation and growth/expansion of one of our in-house solutions: Ovante, Accion´s EdTech platform created in 2019 with the ambition to reach more than 5 million low income, low educated microentrepreneurs to offer a high quality, agile and friendly solution to improve their business, digital and financial skills to empower them to grow their businesses, their income, and their overall wellbeing. Responsibilities include:

• Lead the strategy and growth of Ovante in Latin America. Gather market intelligence and identify industry trends in EdTech, to identify areas for product growth and market positioning, remaining ahead of the curve. Build long-lasting relationships with providers of Tech, Data, Content and Marketing to ensure delivery on each of the different fronts for smooth functioning of the platform.
• Maintain and develop a network of donors, partners, companies, investors, and communities active in the sector of EdTech.
• Establish product performance targets and metrics and be accountable for the overall performance of the platform.
• Define, own, communicate and deliver on the global strategy of Ovante in Latin America and ensure these align with Accion’s overall goals and objectives.
• Partner closely with other members of the team to build efficiencies towards the overall platform strategy.
• Lead the implementation of the Ovante product strategy, including
  • monitoring product performance and creating feedback loops to continuously assess and improve product performance
  • defining project scopes and effectively managing product budgets and workplans
  • communicating product progress, keeping team members and key stakeholders updated throughout all stages
• Serve as a subject matter expert when required in client meetings, FinTech / EdTech summits and other corporate events and represent Ovante Latam in different forums.
• Identify opportunities to develop and showcase learnings, insights and innovations resulting from our digital financial capability building work.
• Collaborate effectively across other areas of Accion and leverage relationships in the industry to enhance our knowledge and capacity in digital financial capability strategies and tools.

Job Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in relevant area, master’s degree preferred.
• 8+ years of progressive experience in product and business development, including 3+ years in digital product development with financial services in emerging and/or low-income markets.
• Previous experience on defining and executing growth strategies to take product/start-up/solution from implementation to sustainable expansion.
• Adept in managing a digital product from end-to-end and understand low-income populations and their financial capability needs.
• Previous entrepreneurial experience in a highly innovative sector, technology companies or startups ecosystem.
• Experience in successfully managing digital products and online platforms, including conceptualization, business case development, financial modeling and scenario planning, and piloting.
• Experience scaling product through social and digital marketing.
• Experience in establishing clear performance targets and metrics, with a proven track record of meeting or exceeding challenging targets.
• Strong business acumen, with the ability to structure and negotiate deals with partners. Strong quantitative skills and the ability to use data and metrics to inform decisions.
• Excellent presentation, verbal, and written communication skills.
• English and Spanish fluency is required.

Travel Requirements

Willingness to travel up to 30% in Latin America.