Salary:
London from £79,800 to £105,000 (depending on experience)

National from £72,600 to £95,000 (depending on experience)

An exciting new opportunity that advises and supports the development and execution of the Financial Promotions & Enforcement Taskforce (FPET) department!

The Financial Promotions & Enforcement Taskforce (FPET) is a department that straddles the FCA’s regulatory perimeter. The department has a wide remit covering both authorised and unauthorised activities in all sectors. FPET’s overarching role is to reduce harm arising from: 

 Non-compliant financial promotions issued by authorised firms   

• Unauthorised activity, scams, fraud and breaches of the Financial Promotions Order by unauthorised entities   
• Scams and high-risk, non-standard investments where authorised firms are involved in the production and distribution of products   
• Other unregulated activity conducted by authorised firms that has the potential to cause significant customer harm and financial loss.  

FPET plays a hugely important role in policing the regulatory perimeter, included in the department is the Perimeter Team that has responsibility for receiving and assessing the many thousands of reports about potential unauthorised activity each year, resolving as many matters as possible without using enforcement powers and escalating the most serious matters to the Unauthorised Business Department (UBD) in Enforcement and Markets Oversight for full investigation. Furthermore, the team is responsible for all perimeter policy matters so works closely with internal partners such as LLR, Retail Enforcement, Project Innovate, Policy, the Press Office, together with key external stakeholders such as City of London Police, Insolvency Service, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), the National Economic Crime Centre (NECC), His Majesty’s Treasury (HMT) and Trading Standards.

The departments work (in particular, within the Perimeter Team) involves technical legal analysis to establish whether unauthorised firms are likely to be breaching the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA). This will often involve conducting detailed legal analysis and legal drafting to communicate with firms and/or internal/external counsel.

What you will be doing?

You will be supporting in the development and execution of the department, and wider FCA strategy, through:

• Providing assistance and legal advice to the Head of Department, Perimeter Team managers and FPET managers more generally, in relation to key risks arising from complex cases in the Perimeter Team especially where these carry potential risk for other teams in FPET or the organization more widely
• Assisting the teams to formulate the most appropriate strategy and tactics to employ as the case is progressed and, in conjunction with other internal stakeholders, help to focus large and complex cases
• Providing legal advice and drafting support to junior and senior team members in relation to its complex cases
• Helping to facilitate collaboration between the Perimeter Team and key internal stakeholders, such as relevant FCA legal teams and the Unauthorised Business Department as well as key external stakeholders where relevant to complex casework.
• Drafting and feeding into briefing notes and decision papers relating to complex cases to enable senior managers to make an informed decision on complex, high profile and/or high risk cases.
• Training and coaching staff when required and act as a member of expert groups when appropriate

What will you get from the role?

• Opportunity to work on high profile cases and issues across authorised and unauthorised firms
• Develop a deep understanding of the regulatory perimeter and how we protect it
• Opportunity to shape the FCA’s approach to tackling unregulated business 
• Gain exposure to FCA Senior Management across multiple areas (policy, enforcement supervision, authorisation) with discussions at relevant FCA governance forums

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 plus bank holidays
• Private healthcare with Bupa  
• A non-contributory Pension of at least 8% of basic salary each month (there are several contribution levels that increase depending on your age – up to 12% a month once you reach age 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.  

The skills and experience you will have 

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

Minimum

• Experience of analysing complex evidence quickly to form a view as to what action is warranted, what further evidence may be required/available and how it might be obtained
• Proven practical experience of advising on, preparing and progressing financial services litigation involving novel and/or complex technical legal arguments
• Practical experience of civil commercial court and/or crown court procedure to a practicing legal level

Essential

• Experience of investigating complex and dishonest schemes designed to part consumers from their money Experience of the regulatory perimeter and its activities and how these may interact with other regulations and regulatory authorities
• An understanding of unauthorised business
• Experience of working flexibly across teams and investigations to add insight and rigor and to facilitate innovation
• Experience of designing and providing training on a variety of issues relating to criminal and/or commercial civil law and investigations
• Experience of mentoring and coaching of more junior staff, including with respect to the perimeter and the application of financial services legislation to cases
• A strong understanding of the financial services landscape, regulatory developments and evolving business models
• Strong communication skills in order to present the outcome of analysis clearly and effectively, orally and in writing – often with senior stakeholders both internally and externally who may not have a legal background
• Strong relationship management and negotiation skills to build, maintain and influence effective working relationships with colleagues in other business units and with external bodies

About the FCA   

The FCA regulates the conduct of 45,000 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 – Practising Legal 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  

Applications for this role close at 23:59 on 19th November 2024

This role is graded as Technical Specialist – Practising Legal

What to expect from our interview process  

All applications will be reviewed once the advert has closed.

Shortlisted candidates will be invited for a case study. Only successful candidates from the case study stage will be shortlisted for a 60-min competency-based interview.

Got a question?    

If you are interested in learning more about the role please contact:

For Internal applicants, please contact Cheryl Cheung at [email protected]

For External applicants, please contact Aaron Ward at [email protected]

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. 

Please note – Applications must be submitted through our online portal. Applications sent via email will not be accepted.