E T Consultant

At the World Bank, a member of the World Bank Group (WBG), you’ll join a diverse, global community working across cultures, disciplines, and borders to address the world’s most pressing development challenges. With 1.2 billion young people reaching working age in the decade ahead, the challenge of job creation has never been greater. Through partnerships across 145 countries and more than 182 offices worldwide, we work with governments, private sector, development partners and other stakeholders to invest in people, strengthen markets, and deliver scalable, data-driven solutions that generate more and better jobs and improve lives. For more information, visit International Bank for Reconstruction and Development . Background: The World Bank's Financial Inclusion team within the Financial Services Sector (FSS) works to expand financial inclusion and improve the quality and usage of financial services for households and firms across developing countries. Within FSS, the Financial Inclusion team manages two of the World Bank's global data products on payments and remittances: the Remittance Prices Worldwide (RPW) database and the Global Payment Systems Survey (GPSS). RPW, launched in 2008, monitors the cost incurred by remitters when sending money along major remittance corridors across all regions of the world. It tracks the prices of services offered by banks, money transfer operators, mobile operators, and post offices, and serves as the reference for measuring progress toward global remittance cost reduction objectives, including the G20 commitment to reduce the global average cost to 3 percent. RPW results are published quarterly on the RPW website and in the RPW Quarterly report. The GPSS, first launched in 2007, surveys national and regional central banks and monetary authorities on the status of payment systems. It combines quantitative and qualitative measures covering all aspects of national payment systems, from infrastructure and the legal and regulatory environment to technological and business model innovations, international remittances, and oversight frameworks, and recent iterations have been expanded to cover fintech, cybersecurity, and central bank digital currencies. GPSS findings guide policy dialogue at the international and national levels and inform World Bank Group technical assistance. To support the maintenance, quality assurance, and analysis of these two data products, the team seeks to recruit an Extended Term Consultant (ETC) to provide research assistance. Objective: The ETC will provide research assistance for the RPW database and the GPSS, including support to data collection and quality control, data processing and analysis, preparation of tables, charts, and summary statistics, and support to the drafting and dissemination of related publications. The ETC will work under the guidance of the RPW and GPSS task teams. Scope of Work and Duties: 1. Remittance Prices Worldwide (RPW). Support the quarterly RPW data cycle, including coordination with the external data provider and review of corridor- and service-level price data against the RPW methodology (transfer fees, exchange rate margins, speed, and service attributes). Conduct data validation and quality checks to identify outliers, inconsistencies, and missing data, and follow up on their resolution. Compute and update RPW indicators, including the Global Average, the International MTO Index, the Global SmaRT Average, the digital remittances indices, and averages by region, provider type, and sending and receiving instrument. Prepare tables, charts, and annexes for the RPW Quarterly report, and update content on the RPW website and World Bank DataBank. Support periodic reviews of corridor coverage, service sampling, and the prospects index. 2. Global Payment Systems Survey (GPSS). Support the preparation and implementation of the next iteration of the GPSS, including review and updating of the questionnaire, preparation of survey guidance, and maintenance of respondent contact lists. Track responses and follow up with central banks and monetary authorities to maximize response rates and clarify incomplete or inconsistent answers. Clean, code, and validate survey responses, ensuring consistency with prior iterations to enable trend analysis. Produce data tables by region and income group, economy-level data files, and summary statistics for the GPSS report and online data resources. 3. Data Management and Documentation. Maintain well-documented, reproducible code and data pipelines for both RPW and GPSS. Update codebooks, methodological notes, and data dictionaries. Ensure proper storage, version control, and institutional knowledge retention. Prepare datasets for public release in line with World Bank data publication standards. 4. Analytical and Dissemination Support. Conduct descriptive and basic econometric analysis using RPW and GPSS data under the guidance of senior team members. Contribute to the drafting of report sections, background notes, briefs, and blogs based on RPW and GPSS data. Prepare presentations and data visualizations, and respond to internal and external data requests related to RPW and GPSS. 5. Innovation, Automation, and AI-Enabled Workflows. Support the modernization of RPW and GPSS data operations. Develop and maintain automated data pipelines for ingestion, cleaning, validation, indicator calculation, and publication, reducing manual processing and turnaround time. Expand and maintain API-based data collection from remittance service providers and other sources, and support the development of APIs and machine-readable outputs for disseminating RPW and GPSS data. Explore and pilot AI-enabled workflows, such as automated anomaly detection in price data, AI-assisted coding and classification of open-ended survey responses, and AI-supported drafting of routine tables and summaries, with appropriate human review and quality assurance. Build interactive dashboards and visualizations, and document new tools to ensure they are transparent, reproducible, and sustainable.