Fixed Income Market Abuse Specialist

Salary: National ranging from £51,200 to £68,300 and London from £56,400 to £75,000 per annum – Salary offered will be based on skills and experience

Are you interested in joining a team that plays a key role in delivering the FCA’s strategy in combatting market abuse?

The team/department

Market Oversight is responsible for overseeing primary and secondary market participants through the listing, prospectus, and market abuse regimes. Our mission is to promote conduct that supports trusted, orderly, and efficient markets. Market Abuse Enquiries is part of Secondary Market Oversight, which has the primary responsibility for identifying and reviewing instances of potential market abuse and referring the most serious cases to Enforcement.

We are looking for a new team member to join our FICC Market Abuse Team (Fixed Income, Currency, and Commodities), specialised in investigating market abuse in FICC markets. Our work derives from market abuse notifications reported to the FCA and a data-led, proactive approach focusing on those products and markets that are subject to our enhanced regulatory focus.

We are seeking to hire a Senior Associate with practical experience and technical understanding of Fixed Income markets and products and/or investigations in this area, and interest in working with large data sets and surveillance software.

The role includes triage of market abuse notifications and events, managing your own portfolio of casework, taking responsibility for challenging triage decisions, and investigating complex cases. Furthermore, the role contributes to further development of our analytical capabilities to increase efficiency and effectiveness in the analysis and visualisation of commercial and regulatory data.

What you will be doing

• Reviewing allegations of market abuse in Fixed Income, conducting pre-Enforcement referral investigation and analysis, and determining which cases should be recommended for formal investigation by Enforcement

• Delivering non-Enforcement outcomes

• Working with specialists in the team to identify and analyse market events and trading of interest or concern

• Working with Enforcement on formal investigations, gathering and analysing evidence, and providing market technical support and knowledge

• Supporting management in decision-making and prioritisation of market abuse notifications

• Contributing to the development of new and improvement of existing analytical tools to increase efficiency and effectiveness in analysing and visualising commercial and regulatory data

What you will get from the role?

This is a varied role in one of the most dynamic areas of the FCA offering an excellent opportunity to play a key role in achieving the FCA’s strategic objective by delivering assertive action on market abuse. On your journey to becoming a FICC market abuse case officer, you will be working with, and learning from, FICC specialists who combine significant FICC industry experience with regulatory and market abuse know-how. You will gain considerable exposure to Excel, visualisation tools such as Tableau and One Tick surveillance software, and together with the team, you will drive the development of FICC analytical tools and surveillance alerts. Furthermore, you will have exposure to a variety of activities covered by the Secondary Market Oversight department and have opportunities to build relationships with staff across the Market Oversight directorate and beyond.

Working in Market Abuse Enquiries, you will benefit from:

• Exposure to interesting, varied work in a priority area for the FCA with the opportunity to provide technical input

• The opportunity to take responsibility for your own caseload, making recommendations and decisions to achieve a variety of outcomes

• Exposure to a wide range of Fixed Income case work and the opportunity to work as an Appointed Investigator on formal Enforcement investigations

• Work closely with other areas of the FCA

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: 

• ​25 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

Minimum  

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. 

• Prior practical experience in Fixed Income markets and products gained as trader, sales, research analyst, quant, or similar role in either a buy or sell-side firm or trading venue

• Experience of working with Fixed Income market structures, rates and credit flow products including exchange and OTC-traded derivatives

Essential​

• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, both written and verbal, with ability to explain complex, technical matters clearly and succinctly to a range of audiences, with the ability to write concise, succinct reports

• Ability to prioritise effectively when handling multiple work-streams and tasks

• Very strong team player and ability to work productively and collaboratively in a team

• Excellent analytical skills and affinity to working with data sets and visualisation tools; good working knowledge of Excel

• The ability to make sound, evidence-based judgements, and recommendations alongside a flexible and adaptable approach

• Self-starter with a proactive approach to acquiring new skills and knowledge and managing own workload

• Curiosity and enthusiasm for learning and sharing knowledge and ability to build strong and effective working relationships with colleagues and other stakeholders

• Understanding of the UK Market Abuse Regulation (UK MAR)

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 Senior Associate 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 1st December 2024

• This role is graded as Senior Associate - Regulatory​

Got a question?

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

• For internal applicants, please contact Louise Nash at [email protected]

• For external applicants, please contact Chhavi Bartaria at [email protected]

What to expect from our interview process

The process will involve two separate stages:

• Successful candidates will be invited to complete a written market abuse case study

• A 90-minute competency-based interview​

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 that all applications must be submitted through our online portal, applications sent via email will not be accepted.