1. Background:

The Alliance for Financial Inclusion

The Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) is the world’s leading organization on financial inclusion policy and regulation. Currently, 90 member institutions make up the AFI network including central banks, ministries of finance and other financial policymaking or regulatory institutions from over 84 developing countries and emerging markets. AFI empowers policymakers to increase the access and usage of quality financial services for the underserved through sustainable and inclusive policies and an effective use of digital technologies.

Policies developed and implemented by AFI members contribute to a range of the Sustainable Development Goals. By Setting their own agenda, AFI members harness the power of peer learning to develop practical and tested policy reforms that enhance financial inclusion with strategic support from both public and private sector partners.

AFI has 7 Working Groups (WG): Consumer Empowerment and Market Conduct Working Group (CEMCWG), Digital Financial Services Working Group (DFSWG), Financial Inclusion Data Working Group (FIDWG), Financial Inclusion Strategy Peer Learning Group (FISPLG), Global Standards Proportionality Working Group (GSPWG), Inclusive Green Finance Working Group (IGFWG) and SME Finance Working Group (SMEFWG),

As the key source of policy developments and trends in financial inclusion and as the primary mechanism for generating and incubating technical content in the network, the Working Groups serve as "communities of practice". Providing a platform for knowledge exchange and peer learning among policymakers to share, deliberate and deepen their understanding, the working groups offer leadership and expertise in their respective policy fields and support the network to monitor new developments in emerging fields.

The knowledge generated via the working groups is disseminated for implementation by a range of capacity building activities such as Joint Learning Programs, Member Trainings, Trainings by Private Sector Partners. The practical experience members garner from engaging in peer learning based capacity building is then applied by members as in country implementationprojects which are supported by the provision of financial or technical support to AFI member institutions in conducting activities that aim to deliver financial inclusion policies, regulations, supervisory tools or enablers for the development of policies, such as national financial inclusion strategies.

The working groups receive strategic guidance and insight from the High-Level Global Standards & Policy Committee, while the Gender Inclusive Finance Committee, supports WGs in integrating gender considerations into all aspects of their work and support members in fulfilling their Denarau Action Plan (updated 2022) commitment to promote women’s financial inclusion.

AFI members have made further commitments in a range of other accords which can be read here.

The AFI’s five regional initiatives complete the AFI platform of services by supporting policy implementation in Africa (AfPI), Latin America and the Caribbean (FILAC), the Pacific Islands (PIRI), Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECAPI) and the Arab Region (FIARI).

2. Project Background:

The AFI Data Portal (www.afi-dataportal.org) is a unique integrated global database of financial inclusion policies, regulations and outcomes, built by policymakers for policymakers and the public. The portal was developed to provide members with the opportunity for peer learning and supporting technical level knowledge exchange on key aspects of financial inclusion policy.

The portal functions as a unified “one-stop-shop” database that allows regulators and policymakers from the AFI network to examine policy and regulatory frameworks of their peers. It also allows members to track financial inclusion outcome over time and across regions and globally. To date, the AFI Data Portal houses financial inclusion data from over 60 countries in the network, sourced and reported directly by AFI members.

To ensure the portal runs smoothly and remains online, AFI is seeking the service of a firm to provide maintenance and infrastructure support of the portal.

3. Scope of Work:

The objective of this professional consultancy service is to engage an experienced web and data portal developer to undertake the maintenance and infrastructure support of the AFI Data Portal to ensure the portal remains online and run smoothly throughout the service period.

The current environment of the portal are as follow:

• Application: Drupal 8, MySQL

• Operating system: Ubuntu 22.2 LTS

• Infrastructure: Amazon Web Service

The scope of this consultancy service includes the following:

• Issue, bugs and problem resolutions

• Patches for application

• Code deployment for production server

• Patch installation for packages used for servers

• Infrastructure support

• Provide fixes for the data portal

• Ensure AFI Data Portal is up and running

During the duration of the professional consultancy service contract, the firm is expected to provide support during business hours (Kuala Lumpur, 9am to 6pm) from Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays. The work will be off-site review in coordination with the AFI Main Office (Kuala Lumpur).

4. Timeline:

The assignment is expected for an initial duration of 12 months, starting from 21 November 2025.

No - Deliverables by the Consultant - Tentative Deadlines

1. Consultancy assignment starts - 21 November 2025

2. Request of service (reserved per month) - 21 November 2025 – 20 November 2026

   5. Travel:

No travel is expected for this assignment. The consultant(s) will work remotely and undertake virtual meetings to complete the tasks, in coordination with AFI HQ in Kuala Lumpur.

6. Consultant Experience:

The firm undertaking this assignment should have the following qualifications:

• Qualified and registered company

• Technical experience in development and/or maintaining Drupal-based web portals

• Team member(s) with minimum of five (5) years of experience in Drupal application, managing MySQL database and administration of Amazon Web Service cloud server

• Fluent in English (oral and writing) is required

7. Reporting:

The consultant(s) will report to AFI’s Monitoring and Evaluation department and is expected to provide monthly status updates (in writing).

8. Payment Terms:

An invoice will be raised on a monthly basis. Payment will be made upon approval of the work submitted by the M&E Department.

9. Administrative Information:

9.1 Disclaimer

The final decision on selection of a firm for this project rests with AFI management team and with the Inquiry. Only shortlisted and successful firms will be contacted.

9.2 Proposal Submission Information:

Proposals will be due with the following requirements for submission:

Submission Deadline: 13 October 2025

Documents to be submitted with Annexure 1 and 2:

Firm

1. Company Registration;

2. Company Profile;

3. List of previous or current clientele on similar work;

4. Workplan (graph/timeline)

5. References with email contact;

6. Joint-Agreement (if any);

7. Conflict of Interest Disclosure form;

8. At least one (1) sample work (link or attachments) if any

Individual

1. Full CVs with list of previous similar work;

2. Disclosure if individual have a full time or part time employment contract with any organization or government official or indirect involvement in this tender;

3. Workplan (graph/timeline)

4. Conflict of Interest Disclosure form;

5. Reference letter (if any);

6. References with email contact;

• At least one (1) sample work (link or attachments) if any

Method of Submission:

By email to AFI’s Procurement & Contracts Office at

RFP2531@afi-global.org

Submission of Technical and Financial:

Kindly submit the followings:

1. Using the template/format given in Annexure 1 (Technical) and Annexure 2 (Financial) and/or additional technical proposal for more information.

2. Technical and Financial proposals must be separated in different pdf.

3. Financial proposals must be USD only. Whereas for Malaysian applicants with Business Registration under Suruhanjaya Syarikat Malaysia (SSM), please submit your financial proposals in MYR.

4. Proposal to be submitted to the designated email address.

5. AFI does not tolerate copyright infringement, including but not limited to infringement, in the form of plagiarism. Consultant or Consulting entity awarded a contract by AFI shall take responsibility to ensure that the authored works, produced in parts or as an entirety of the deliverables stated in this RFP does not infringe on copyrights.

AFI is not bound to accept the lowest quoted bid and reserves the right to disqualify incomplete submission, overlapping submission, non-compliance to the above requirements. Notification of results will only be sent to shortlisted candidates upon completion.

9.3 Retention of Proposals

All proposals submitted become the property of AFI. AFI will make all reasonable efforts to maintain proposals in confidence and will release proposals only to personnel involved with the evaluation of the project. Proprietary information should be identified in each proposal.

10. Evaluation Criteria

The proposals submitted will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

1. Profile and Overall Qualification - 30%

Company Background and Profile - 20%

Professional qualification of key staff for the assignment - 10%

2. Technical experience of key staff for the assignment - 50%

Relevant technical experience in Drupal application, managing MySQL database and administration of Amazon Web Service cloud server - 40%

Relevant experience in managing clientele on similar work - 10%

3. Adequacy of the proposed work plan and methodology in responding to the Terms of Reference - 20%

Support model and processes proposed - 10%

Support architecture - 10%

Total : 100%

Evaluation of technical and financial proposals

AFI reserves the right to award the most suitable proposal based on the evaluation of combined criterion, where bidders are qualified by the combined valuation of the technical and financial proposals, with the following weightage:

i) Technical Proposal: 70% (Seventy percent)

ii) Financial Proposal: 30% (Thirty percent)

How to apply

How to Apply

Interested applicants are expected to submit a proposal with an updated CV and using the template given by email to AFI’s Procurement & Contracts Office at RFP2531@afi-global.org by 13th October 2025, 11:59PM (UTC +8).

Note: AFI does not tolerate copyright infringement, including and not limited to infringement, in the form of plagiarism. Consultant or consulting entity awarded a contract by AFI shall take responsibility to ensure that the authored works, produced in parts or as an entirety of the deliverables stated in this RFP does not infringe on copyrights.

The final decision on the selection of a consultant/consulting firm for this project rests with AFI management team and with the Inquiry. Only shortlisted and successful consultants will be contacted.