Economist

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The Chief Risk Officer (CRO) Vice Presidency of the World Bank is the core unit responsible for institutional risk oversight, including establishment and monitoring adherence to risk policies and guidelines and risk assessment and reporting to the Board and executive management. Its mission is to enable and support the institution to achieve its goals in a financially sustainable manner. The VPU assists management with identifying and managing group-wide cross-cutting risks, enhancing risk response decisions, reducing financial and operational surprises and losses, seizing opportunities and improving deployment of capital. The CRO Vice Presidency comprises three Departments: 1) Credit Risk (CROCR); 2) Market & Counterparty Risk (CROMC), and 3) Operational Risk (CROOR).

The Credit Risk Department (CROCR) ensures that the Bank's credit risk exposure is commensurate with the risk appetite of stakeholders and strikes the appropriate balance between financial and development objectives. CROCR manages the credit risk inherent in IBRD's loan portfolio. CROCR's core functions include, among others (i) Assessing and rating country credit risk for all IBRD borrowers; (ii) Assessing country eligibility for IBRD resources; (iii) Influencing IBRD’s lending strategy and assessing lending plans against lending allocations as established through the exposure management framework: (iv) Anticipating countries that are vulnerable to crises; (v) Participating in arrears workouts for IBRD borrowing countries; (vi) Engaging with the Paris Club of bilateral creditors; (vii) Ensuring IBRD is adequately provisioned for loan losses; and (viii) Assessing/Monitoring the size of credit shocks (unexpected losses) as part of IBRD’s capital adequacy framework.

Responsibilities

The Economist position is within the Sovereign Risk Unit in CROCR. As country coordinator, the successful candidate will:

• Have primary ratings and risk management responsibility for allocated IDA and IBRD borrowing countries, assessing economic, financial and political developments these countries, with particular focus on implications for default risk to IBRD/IDA. This includes the periodic presentation of country risk notes including risk rating proposal to the CROCR’s risk ratings Committee, as well as ongoing country monitoring.
• Contribute to the dialogue with World Bank country operational teams on issues relating to macroeconomic and debt risks and exposure, including:
• Contributing to corporate reviews of Country Partnership Frameworks and other strategic country-level documents; and Development Policy Financing operations, at concept and decision stage
• Engaging with country operations teams on exposure reallocation requests, and debt and macro issues, as needed, in close collaboration with other relevant units across the Bank.
• Contributing to CROCR work on the IDA Sustainable Development Financing Policy (SDFP)
• Contribute to CROCR written products, such as the Annual Risk Report, Board papers, and ad-hoc management briefings, as well as to the department’s continual efforts to improve risk assessment approaches.
• Over time, the candidate could also assume responsibilities within the Department’s teams working on other issues, such as ESG influences on credit risk, Paris Club representation, Short-term Risk Monitoring, and strengthening quantitative approaches.