Payments Supervision Specialist

Location

London / Leeds / Edinburgh

Salary: 

London up to £95,000 per annum and National up to £85,000 – Salary offered will be based on skills and experience

Are you passionate about tackling financial crime? Are you intrigued by the chance to tackle risks in e-money or payments? Do you want to be part of a team forging our approach to the fast-growing payments sector?

If the answer to any one of these is yes, and if you want to make a difference in any of these areas as part a team focused on reducing harm, raising standards, and tackling illicit activity in this exciting and fast-moving sector, then we’d love to hear from you!

The Market Interventions – Payments (MIP) Department

MIP supervises over 1300 authorised e-money institutions and payment services providers, which do not hold banking authorisation.  We do a range of proactive and reactive work responding to issues and risks in our population of firms to avoid or reduce harm to consumers and market integrity and promote competition.

What you will be doing

The successful candidate will report to the Head of Market Interventions - Payments, and will be responsible for:

• Providing deep subject matter expertise on topics and issues relating to the payments industry, payments regulation, and supervision of payments firms, including financial resilience, wind-down planning, safeguarding of customer funds, financial crime, and the protection of vulnerable customers

• Supporting and assisting the department by providing technical input to a range of different pieces of work, including firm cases, multi-firm projects, ad-hoc queries, and industry initiatives and representing payments supervision in cross-FCA or industry forums

• Considering and advising the department’s management team on how industry developments, as well as policy developments, may impact how we supervise firms, whilst contributing to the development of the portfolio strategy for payments

• Taking charge for the department on specific supervisory themes (such as safeguarding, financial crime); being the first point of contact for related queries, and owning the relationship with relevant internal stakeholders

• Supporting the department in liaising with external stakeholders such as the Payments System Regulator, Bank of England, HM Treasury, or payments trade bodies

• Developing or arranging training on technical topics for the department, and sharing knowledge with other internal teams through ‘teach-ins’ and other means; at times you will be required to grow and enhance the team’s knowledge and capabilities in your specialism

What will you get from the role?

• Drive interesting, stimulating and challenging work that is integral to how we protect consumers and market integrity in the payments sector

• Exposure to the leadership of Payments and the broader FCA as you craft your ideas and work into practical actions and strategies

• Fascinating interactions with industry participants and trade bodies, as well as other regulatory and law enforcement partners

• Unique insight into how regulation works in a fast pace and changing environment

Our competitive flexible benefits scheme gives you the opportunity to create a personalised benefits package, tailored to suit your lifecycle. You can use this allowance to purchase additional benefits such as dental or cycle to work or you have the option top up your base salary by taking this as cash.

Core benefits that you will receive as standard are: 

• 28 days holiday per year  

• Private healthcare with Bupa 

• A non-contributory Pension of at least 8% of your basic salary each month (there are several contribution levels that increase depending on your age – up to 12% a month once you reach the age of 35)

• Life assurance of eight times your basic salary 

• Income protection 

We support hybrid working which means you will be able to work from home up to 60% of the time over a month with the remainder of your time in one of our three office locations.

Which skills are required?

We're a signatory to the Government's Disability Confident scheme. This means that we will offer an interview to any disabled candidates entering under the scheme, who best meet the minimum criteria for a role.

Minimum 

• Experience of applying or advising on UK payments and/or e-money regulatory requirements in a regulatory, legal, compliance or industry role

• Experience of judgement-based decision making, with a focus on prudential, financial crime or operational resilience risk management

• Experience in leadership; coaching, mentoring and supporting less experienced team members

Essential

• Very strong analytical capability with a proven ability to quickly, clearly and efficiently draw out key implications from a broad and varied range of information

• Excellent written and oral communication skills

• A subject matter expert in understanding and interpreting the payments sector and business models within it. This should be accompanied with a demonstrated ability to quickly fill any gaps in understanding

• The credibility to effectively engage with FCA senior management and key stakeholders such as the Payments Systems Regulator, the Bank of England and His Majesty’s Treasury

• The ability to work with a high degree of autonomy

• A risk-based approach to decision making, including the ability to reach sound and timely judgements which can be justified in a concise and effective manner

• Ability to work with centralised and local data sources to produce and present reports and insight

About the FCA

The FCA regulates the conduct of 50,000 firms in the UK to ensure our financial markets are honest, fair and competitive. We do this to make sure markets work well for individuals, businesses and the economy as a whole. For more information on what we do, our three-year strategy can be found here.

The FCA's Values & Diversity 

Our ambition is to cultivate a culture of inclusion for all employees that respects their individual strengths, views, and experiences. We believe that our differences and similarities enable us to be a better organisation – one that makes better decisions, drives innovation, and delivers better regulation. 

The FCA is committed to achieving greater diversity across all levels of the organisations. Given this, we particularly welcome applications from women, disabled and minority ethnic candidates for our Technical Specialist role.

Flexible working

We welcome applications from candidates who are looking for flexible arrangements.  Many of our staff work flexibly including working part-time, staggered hours, and job shares.  We can’t promise to give you exactly what you want but we won’t judge you for asking.    

Multi-location

As part of the FCA’s on-going commitment to develop our national presence, most of our vacancies are now open to working in our Edinburgh, Leeds, or London offices. This means that as part of the application process you will be able to select your preference of which office location you would like to work from.  

Useful information 

• This role is graded as Technical Specialist - Regulatory

• Applications for this role will close on Sunday 1st September (midnight)

• CVs will be reviewed by the Recruiting Team from Monday 2nd September onwards

• This is a permanent role

Got a question?

If you are an external candidate and you are interested in learning more about the role, please contact Chhavi Bartaria on c[email protected]

If you are an internal candidate and you are interested in learning more about the role, please contact Jen Wishart on [email protected]

What to expect from our interview process

The process will involve two stages:

• A case study

• A competency-based interview

Your Recruiter will discuss the process in detail with you during screening for the role.  

Application support 

We want to remove any possible barriers and are committed to providing a wide range of reasonable adjustments so that you can keep the focus on your conversations and be at your best.   

If you have an accessibility requirement, disability, or condition that means you might require changes to the recruitment process, please contact your recruiter to discuss this further. Our aim is to make your application as easy and comfortable as possible, and your recruiter will be happy to work with you to make any necessary arrangements where possible.