Manager - Behavioural Science and Design Unit

Manager - Behavioural Science and Design Unit

Location
London

Division
Strategy & Competition

The Role

The FCA is currently recruiting for a Manager in their Behavioural Science & Design Unit.

The Behavioural Science and Design Unit is a specialist unit in the FCA. It supports our policy, competition, supervisory and enforcement functions by designing and executing original behavioural science research and creating tools to be used by frontline staff, often integrating a design approach. It is responsible for the FCA's pioneering behavioural economics work. This is an exciting opportunity for a highly-skilled leader and scientist to help shape the FCA's work on critical issues related to protecting consumers, promoting competition and innovation, and ensuring market integrity and financial stability.

The unit uses the latest ideas and techniques from psychology, economics, data science and increasingly, design, and works extensively with academic contacts in these disciplines. The unit designs empirical analysis to understand consumer behaviour using field experiments, lab or online experiments and econometric analysis of large scale behavioural data. As well as helping the FCA understand how consumers really behave in financial markets, we also use the same toolkits to think about how to influence firm behaviour and how to solve internal challenges that the FCA faces. We achieve impact by developing practical insights and developing training for the organisation.

The unit sits within the Economics Department and often collaborates with other areas across the department, particularly those working on related issues of household finance and the use of economic data science.

What does the role involve? What are the key responsibilities?

• Lead a team of highly-skilled scientists, providing strategic direction, inspiring and constructive challenge, and external voice to the team
• Shape the nature and design of experimental and behavioural research at the FCA, drawing on the most cutting-edge methods in behavioural economics, econometrics, psychology and data science, to tackle questions of strategic importance for the FCA
• Ensure that the team:
• Delivers behavioural science research and practical tools that are useful and readily understandable for policy, competition, supervision and enforcement and can also be published in leading academic journals, where appropriate
• Builds capacity in the organisation to use ideas from psychology in its practical operations, e.g. the supervision or enforcement of rules on financial promotions, product design or product sales.
• Completes analysis while maintaining a high degree of technical proficiency and accuracy
• Communicates findings effectively to a range of internal and external audiences (including non-technical senior stakeholders). They will be able to understand the team's approach and grasp the real-world significance of its insights.
• Ensure high quality management and inspiring development for all team members including embedding effective and efficient processes and managing the workload of direct reports, utilisation against priorities, and delivery of successful projects on time
• This role reports directly to Karen Croxson, who leads research overall at the FCA and is building out its capability in social data science' (integrating economics, data science, and behavioural science)

What will the candidate get from the role?

• You will have a rare opportunity to understand and shape the workings of the financial sector at a time of considerable change
• Through your specialised work you will have the opportunity to play an integral role in driving our decision-making process, directly influencing our investigations and our approach to regulation

Skills/Experience Required

Minimum

We're a signatory to the Government's Disability Confident scheme. This means that we guarantee an interview to any disabled candidates entering under the scheme, should they meet the minimum criteria for a role. A minimum criterion needs to be measurable from reviewing a candidates CV.

• Strong academic background and/or deep applied experience in psychology, behavioural economics or experimental economics
• Experience providing high-quality economic advice related to public policy or regulation
• Experience of project management

Essential

• Ability to originate thought leadership and creative ideas for new research that advances the FCA's mission
• Ability to act as lead researcher, organising and coaching others to deliver high impact analysis and engaging credibly as a peer with leading academics and senior internal stakeholders
• Ability to tackle a challenging problem or use case effectively, defining this conceptually, developing hypotheses, and leveraging a range of empirical strategies (including experimental or quasi-experimental techniques as appropriate) to test these
• Comfortable with ambiguity and able to prioritise and drill down into the issues that matter most for a complex policy question
• Ability to distil findings into impactful, policy-relevant insights, developing a compelling overall storyline that simplifies complexity, cuts through detail where appropriate, and brings insights to life for a range of audiences, both in writing or orally
• Ability to deliver and thrive in a fast-moving environment, maintaining pace and quality of delivery through strong prioritisation and energising leadership

Desirable

• Masters and/or PhD in economics, psychology, social data science, or related discipline from a leading university
• Highly-skilled in storytelling and enjoy communicating findings to a range of internal and external audiences (including non-technical senior stakeholders). They will be able to understand your approach and grasp the real-world significance of your insights.
• Ability to solve problems in an agile, hypothesis-driven way

S&C - Competition & Economics

The FCA has a statutory objective to promote competition in the interest of consumers. The Competition and Economics Division leads on this. Our work includes; conducting market studies across the retail and wholesale sectors, implementing remedies as a result, investigating potential breaches of competition law using our concurrent powers, and the application of economics to problems facing the FCA. The division works closely with colleagues from across the FCA including Policy, Market Intelligence Data and Analysis (MIDA), Enforcement and Supervision to ensure high-quality analysis and effective decisions across all aspects of FCA regulation. We are also part of the UK Competition Network and work with Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on financial services matters.

Useful Information

• This role is graded as Manager, POL D
• The salary range will be approximately 65,000 to 100,000 GBP plus a competitive benefits package and non-contributory pension
• Applications for this role close on 14th April

For internal applications, contact Georgi Kostasdinov at

For external applications, contact Sipho Nyamweda at

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