Competition Market Analyst

Competition Market Analyst

Location

London / Leeds / Edinburgh

Salary: National ranging from £51,200 to £67,000 and London £56,400 to £70,000 per annum – salary offered will be based on skills and experience

Would you like to support our work to make financial markets work better?

The Team

We are currently looking to recruit someone with experience of market and business model analysis to work in the Competition Division of the FCA.

The Financial Conduct Authority is a key part of the regulatory structure in financial services, together with the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Bank of England. We work to make financial markets work well for consumers of financial services.

This role is in the Competition Market and Policy Department of the Competition Division (CD). CD leads much of the work on FCA's competition mandate to help ensure markets are working well for consumers. As part of CD, you will get to investigate whether and why financial services markets might not be working well for consumers. You will also help work out how financial services markets could be improved.

What you will be doing

Working alongside other team members, and key internal stakeholders, the successful candidate will play a key role in contributing and supporting the delivery of CD’s core responsibilities:

• Scoping problems that require investigation, including market failures that may be causing poor outcomes for consumers
• Scoping and recommending how to undertake economic and competition investigation, working with economists, accountants, lawyers and data scientists
• Contributing to project management, supporting the project manager to ensure work is coordinated and on track
• Undertaking your own analysis of markets and business models which could include designing requests for information and evaluating firm responses
• Responsible for presenting insights and findings in an interesting and clear format including written, PowerPoint and orally
• Advocating for competition with internal stakeholders, helping and assisting colleagues to understand and achieve desired outcomes

What you will get from the role

The work will allow you to apply your ability to investigate and understand markets. You will be asked to scope hypotheses, think about ways in which your hypotheses can be tested and work with subject matter experts to generate evidence to test your thinking. You will also get to present your results in interesting ways and to a range of audiences including senior colleagues.

Working alongside economic and legal experts in the field of competition you will ultimately get to make a difference – your problem solving will help consumers get access to better financial service markets.

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'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.

• Prior experience of analysing markets and firm business models
• Prior experience of working within Competition Policy either in policy-making or casework; this could be gained as a policymaker in a competition authority, another regulator, consultancy or government department; in an analytical role supporting policymakers, behavioural scientist or data analyst; or in any other policy-related role, for example advocacy or compliance

Essential

• Ability to make a strong personal impact, influencing with well-reasoned arguments and questioning where appropriate
• Engage, collaborate and support effectively with stakeholders to build and maintain strong working relationships. Drafting and presenting for senior audiences
• Experience in explaining complex issues well to both specialist and non-specialist audiences, orally and in writing
• Be comfortable with ambiguity, identifying the most important issues; creative problem-solving, framing and structuring problems conceptually, prioritising work, and distilling results to generate insight
• Experience in the delivery of complex analytical projects, maintaining both pace and quality and including identifying and analysing different sources of information to inform analysis
• Role model commitment to self-awareness and learning, build own network and support others to identify effective coping techniques

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 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 on Wednesday 2nd October (midnight)
• This role is graded as Senior Associate – Regulatory
• CVs will be reviewed by the recruiting team from Thursday 3rd October onwards
• Interviews likely to be held between 10th – 18th September

Please make the recruiter aware if you are going to be unavailable for any date during this time.

What to expect from our interview process

The process will involve two separate stages:

• Case study (TBC)
• A competency based interview

Your Recruiter will discuss the process in detail with you during screening for the 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 Chhavi.bartaria@fca.org.uk

If you are an internal candidate and you are interested in learning more about the role, please contact Lucy Matthews on lucy.matthews@fca.org.uk

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.