2025 Edinburgh SPC - Specialist Graduate Programme

About Us

At the FCA, we help to protect financial consumers and make markets work well by regulating nearly 45,000 firms. Our ambition is to become a more innovative, more assertive and more adaptive regulator; one that fully capitalises on data and technology, ensures consumer protection and market integrity, and responds well to the challenges we face. We’re looking for graduates to join our diverse and highly capable teams across the FCA.

About the Programme

• Programme Length: Two years
• Programme Type: Rotational

Bring your passion for problem solving and strategic thinking into the constantly evolving world of financial regulation.

To give you an insight into the range of the work we do, Supervision, Policy & Competition (SPC) oversees every business and individual we regulate, ensuring they behave appropriately and meet our standards. We are responsible for developing and maintaining the FCA’s policies and rules, as well as considering issues under our competition powers. The work of SPC is vital to delivering the FCA’s objectives of protecting consumers, maintaining the integrity of financial markets, and promoting competition in the interests of consumers.

SPC is led by Sheldon Mills Executive Director for Consumers and Competition and Sarah Pritchard Executive Director for Markets & International . SPC is the largest division within the FCA and is responsible for:

• Monitoring the sectors by reviewing and assessing business models, providing guidance and planning future changes
• Delivering and integrating effective Policy insights into our competition and supervisory work - this helps to ensure markets function well and better enables us to identify and avoid consumer harm
• Engaging with firms to ensure interests of consumers and integrity of markets is at the heart of their business
• Exploring and analysing identified risks within firms through firm-specific and cross-firm work
• Supporting diversity and inclusion across the industry
• Ensuring firms behave appropriately when detriment arises
• Prudential supervision of all firms not regulated by the PRA
• Working with trade bodies, advisers and other third parties to help identify and communicate trends, and gauge the horizon of risks in the market

You’ll have the opportunity to join our Specialist Directorate where the departments include Financial Crime, Financial Resilience, Resolution Strategy Operations & CASS, Resolution Insolvency, Technology Resilience & Cyber and the Office for Professional Body Anti-Money Laundering Supervision (OPBAS). You could see yourself within one of our teams who lead on specialisms that cross the spectrum of the 50,000 regulated firms and, within OPBAS, having key objectives to reduce the harm of money laundering and terrorist financing in the 25 professional body supervisors that supervise thousands more professional firms. The work involves bringing respective intelligence and perspectives on the firms we regulate to provide a holistic view that can help mitigate root causes and one day, help predict the next issue on a firm. The work within the Directorate includes Policy, Data and Supervision focused work.

Learning & Development

As a graduate in Supervision, Policy and Competition, you’ll have the opportunity to study towards an Apprenticeship, Professional Qualification or enroll on a development pathway relevant to your graduate programme. We will also give you the support you need to develop your career at the FCA.

What we look for

Our staff have diverse backgrounds, and no specific degree stands out as being essential for the Specialist stream. You’ll learn a lot on the job, so we don’t expect you to have a detailed regulatory knowledge, however, you should have an interest in governance and those with a particular interest in the risk specialisms outlined above would be well suited to this stream. You’ll also need to be strategically minded, great at building solid relationships at all levels and be able to influence and persuade.

What we offer

We’re committed to making the FCA a great place to work. We do this by:

• Providing a rewarding environment, recognising that our people are motivated by meaningful work
• Maintaining a solid commitment to diversity and inclusion, allowing people to develop and progress without barriers
• Looking after the well-being of our people, ensuring that they are safe and well and appropriately cared for
• Promoting an environment in which people are valued and respected

Beyond this, we offer all our graduates a competitive range of benefits, including:

• Base salary of £33,000
• Adaptable working options
• Private health care
• Career and family leave
• Non-contributory pension
• Charity and volunteering initiatives
• Minimum of 25 days’ holiday
• Sports and social clubs
• Subsidised on-site fitness centre (London only)
• Free eye tests
• Subsidised restaurant
• Interest-free season ticket loans.

Please note:

• We only accept ONE application per person for our 2025 programmes, therefore, please apply to your first-choice programme. Any additional applications will not be progressed.
• Your application and any work you submit throughout the recruitment process must be all your own. You will not allow another person to complete any parts of the assessment nor submit responses provided or generated by an AI assistant or other similar software.
• Applicants must have obtained or be on track to achieve a minimum 2:1 degree from any university.
• Applicants for the 2025 graduate programmes must have graduated or be in their final year of study.
• For the 2025 Authorisations Graduate Programme, submit your online application by Sunday 8th December 2024. However, we recruit on a rolling basis and therefore encourage early applications.