Job Detail

SME Client Support Afghanistan LLC (“SCSA”) is a consulting and service company registered with the Ministry of Commerce and Industries with its headquarter in Kabul. SCSA is fully owned by ACGF - Afghan Credit Guarantee Foundation (“ACGF”), a foundation with legal incorporation in Germany. ACGF is a credit guarantee fund with the mission to improve access to finance for Afghanistan’s micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (“MSMEs”) by sharing the credit risk of the Afghan partner financial institutions (“PIs”) and by improving their MSME lending capacity with technical assistance (“TA”). Governed by a service contract concluded between ACGF and SCSA, SCSA provides a broad range of ancillary services in the context of ACGF’s credit guarantee technical assistance operations, and program execution.

SCSA is a consulting company, not a financial institution, and it does not provide any financial services. SCSA does not have contractual relationships with the Afghan PIs; it acts as service provider to ACGF carrying out a range of various services, e.g. conducting market research on MSME finance, conducting training needs assessment, providing ongoing technical assistance to PIs (e.g. training-on-the-job and coaching of MSME credit staff), providing support services for the credit guarantee appraisal and guarantee claim appraisal, carrying out monitoring support for the guarantee portfolio and the compliance of PIs as well as collecting various types of information for ACGF (market-, portfolio-, risk-relevant information).

In addition to the guarantee and TA operations, SCSA supports ACGF with the implementation of a nationwide grant program for MSMEs in Afghanistan. The program foresees disbursements of non-repayable Matching Grants (“MGs”) to MSMEs, thereby enhancing their access to finance and enabling businesses to overcome the current economic crisis.  MGs are available for a period of almost three years and will be matched with new guaranteed loans provided by PIs to minimize market distortion and ensure an own contribution by the supported MSMEs. Grants, therefore, create additionality as they substitute borrower equity, enhance repayment capacity, and enable PIs to resume lending with conducive lending conditions, e.g. longer maturities.

Purpose of Position

The Finance & Controlling Officer is responsible for all areas relating to financial related tasks as per SCSA policies and procedures. The position will be responsible for developing and maintaining accounting principles, practices, and procedures to ensure accurate and timely financial records. This position addresses tight deadlines and a good number of accounting activities including general ledger preparation, financial reporting, year-end audit preparation, and other finance related activities. In addition, the job holder will be involved in maintaining proper financial supporting documents and filling system.

Duties and Responsibilities

The scope of work the covers the following specific areas:

Finance

1. Accounting and Bookkeeping

• Ensures all processes and procedures are implemented in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (“IFRS”) along with the German and Afghan government regulations
• Receives, sorts, and checks all supporting documents for processing all sorts of payments on a daily basis
• Performs day-to-day activities in line with SCSA’s requirements, standard operating procedures, resources, tools, and quality standards
• Responds appropriately and rapidly to requests from SCSA’s internal staff and its clients
• Perform work in line with the Finance department scope and Finance and Accounting Manual.
• Prepares standard exchange rates, prepares, reviews, and processes wire transfers
• Supports responses to corporate and project-level audits
• Assists with identifying finance operations that would benefit from improved/clarified policies, systems, and/or software strategies
• Analyzes, develops, and assists with maintenance of software to increase automation of tasks associated with financial management and budgeting
• Develops and maintains productive relationships with clients, vendors, partners, and consultants that serve to enhance SCSA’s reputation
• Develops a solid understanding of roles and responsibilities within the Finance and HR department as well as its functions vis-à-vis the company’s work, mission, and practices
• Ensures proper implementation of policies, processes, and procedures of authorization levels for initiation, submission, reconciling, viewing, or approval of different types of transactions
• Makes sure the staff are well-informed about their responsibilities for every transaction they sign on
• Makes certain that all transactions are authorized and processed after approval in a timely manner to avoid potential fraud
• Reconciles transaction source document details with the relevant financial reports
• Verifies the transaction details in a timely manner in order to identify errors or discrepancies at the right time
• Makes sure the reconciliation processes are consistent
• Secures financial data from being viewed by unauthorized individuals
• Conduct periodic reconciliation of all accounts to ensure the accuracy
• Verification and reconciliation of different financial and management reports including cost accounting report, comparison reports, and budget analysis
• Ability of producing financial statements independently

2. Cash Management

• Supervises cash management operations that include cash administration, management of current accounts, and bank relations
• Reviews and drives improvements in cash management, ensuring financial obligations are met in accordance with SCSA’s policies and procedures
• Timely reconciles cash applications and disbursements
• Forecasts, monitors, and tracks cash flow weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.
• Prepares cash flow reports and identifies and evaluates variances
• Receives incoming wire transfers and processes outgoing wire transfers
• Maintains the daily petty cash book and ensures the petty cash transactions are recorded on a daily basis and timely reconciles cash applications and disbursements

3. Compliance and Filling System:

• Adhere to SCSA policies, tools, and Accounting and Financial manual.
• Receives, sorts, and checks all supporting documents for processing all sorts of payments on a daily basis
• Prepares the vouchers of all operational costs including, administration expenses, vendors, international consultants, etc.
• Ensures to keep a proper filing system according to SCSA policies.

Please send your application including a 1-page cover letter, CV, and three references to https://acgf.bamboohr.com/careers/173 until January 15, 2024.

Please mention “Application for the position of “Finance & Controlling Officer” in the subject line of your e-mail.

Female candidates are explicitly encouraged to apply. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.