AddressThe PSR is the economic regulator of, and competition authority for, the payment systems that underpin our economy. Our role is to hold the sector to account to protect people and businesses and promote competition and innovation in these systems and the markets that they support. We regulate an industry where billions of pounds of transactions are occurring every year.
Think about the last time you made or received a payment. Did you pay by cash (and if so, think about how you got that cash)? Did you use a digital wallet, such as ApplePay or PayPal? Did you use a debit or credit card? Or was it when you received your salary payment in your bank account? All these different payments rely on systems regulated by the PSR, including LINK, Mastercard, Visa Europe, Faster Payments Scheme and Bacs.
Our Work Aims To Ensure Payment Systems Work Well, So That The Payments They Support Also Work Well In Society. We Currently Have a Varied Work Programme Which Includes
- Investigating card scheme fees and cross-border interchange fees to understand whether any harms might results from recent rises in these fees
- Examining the opportunities and risks for account-to-account payments for retail transactions, as an alternative to cards, including identifying barriers to the success of account-to-account retail payments and exploring how these can be overcome
- Monitoring and analysing the markets we oversee to gather intelligence, provide analytical thinking, develop how we use data, and develop the PSR’s strategy.
More information on each of these projects, and our other work, can be found in our annual plan.
Why join the PSR?
Our work is high-profile and fast-moving, within a dynamic environment. We are ambitious about the future. The work that you’ll be involved in every day will help us to deliver outcomes that benefit people and businesses.
The work we do has a real impact on everyday lives and brings meaning to our work here. Our people are motivated to make differences that matter to people and businesses that are making and receiving payments.
We are a small regulator with a big impact. Our size offers opportunities to be involved in executive-level discussions from early on in your time at the PSR and to influence the decisions we make. There is a huge amount of variety to the work we do, allowing you to develop skills in the areas that interest you including policy decisions, economic regulation, competition assessments, analysing data or informing the strategy of the PSR. Our size also means we have a friendly and personal ethos, which allows you to develop in your role and build on your strengths.
We have a collaborative culture that draws on all our different skills and experiences. The economists at the PSR come from many different backgrounds, including other economic regulators, government departments, consultancies and competition agencies. We apply our collective experience from rail, water, energy, transport, telecoms, financial services and a variety of competition cases to the myriad of issues that arise in payment systems.
The role
We’re looking for an experienced economist with a strong competition or regulatory background to join our economics function. You will be responsible for scoping and driving much of our economics work on account-to-account retail payments, working with a team of economists. The work on this project has the potential to change the way we all pay for goods and services in the future. It touches on a number of different and complex economic issues. We are therefore particularly keen to talk to those with experience of designing and implementing economic regulation. Experience of the economics of network industries and two-sided markets would also be valuable.
Our work on account-to-account retail payments aims to introduce more competition and innovation into payment systems using Open Banking functionality. The project was set up in response to growing concerns about the fees paid by merchants to Visa and Mastercard for the services they provide. Our work will help ensure more cost-reflective fees for payment services and that these payment services better meet the needs of merchants and consumers.
We issued a paper in December 2023 that set out our initial proposals for variable recurring payments (VRP), a sub-set of account-to-account retail payments. We proposed several significant regulatory interventions to address some of the economic barriers we identified to the success of VRP. This included intervening on the fee that banks can charge for access to their customers’ account data and to initiate payments, and a proposal to mandate that certain banks must sign up to rules that will enable VRP. We continue to develop our policy for VRP and are also considering our policy options for wider account-to-account retail payments. Your role will be to help support this policy development, including issues related to prices, adoption, barriers to entry, incentives and cost-benefit analysis.
Key Accountabilities
The role of an Economic Technical Specialist at the PSR involves providing economic input on a range of policy issues. We are a relatively small team so you will need to be a self-starter. You will be responsible for presenting ideas to different audiences including other economists, policy experts, lawyers, senior staff and external stakeholders. You should have excellent influencing and communication skills to ensure your analysis can be understood and that economics continues to play a central role in many of the policy decisions. You should have good project management skills to be able to lead a team of economists to deliver analysis and insight.
In Addition, You Will Typically
- Lead the development of robust economic analysis to support relevant elements of policy development and ensuring it Is evidence-based.
- Line manage economists within the team, and be an active member of the management team.
- Draft sections of papers and presentations, often within tight timeframes, communicating complex economic concepts clearly to non-economists. This will include internal presentations to senior staff, ExCo and Board as well as external publications.
- Support colleagues by providing quality assurance support and challenge to peers' analysis
- Identify key economic issues that need to be addresses and scope out workstreams and analytical approaches
- Engage with stakeholders to gather evidence, test policy options and explain our approach.
- Contribute to the development of the PSR’s economics profession, through knowledge sharing across the PSR, mentoring and line management
About You
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, should they meet the minimum criteria for a role.
Minimum
- Previous experience in leading economic analysis in at least one of economic regulation; competition policy; economic appraisal of policies; payment services or other regulated industries
- An undergraduate or postgraduate qualification in economics or a related discipline with a focus on microeconomics, or equivalent experience
Essential
- Pragmatic understanding of both relevant microeconomic economic theory and how it is applied in relation to regulatory work
- Experience of leading economic analysis in the context of regulatory projects such as price controls, regulatory reviews, market studies, investigations, actions and appeals or similar
- Experience in scoping workstreams to address identified economic issues and delivering against project plans in a timely manner
- Excellent written and oral communication skills, including experience of explaining technical economics to both other specialist economists and non economists in succinct messages, and the ability to present confidently to a variety of internal and external stakeholders
- Strong relationship and influencing skills and an ability to work collaboratively at senior levels internally and externally
- Proven ability to prepare and present Board level communications authoritatively.
- Able to constructively challenge analysis performed by other technical expertis, internally and externally
- Excellent prioritisation skills with the ability to define priorities and provide a quality contribution where it is most needed
- Ability quickly to develop an understanding of the key regulatory and economic issues relating to payment systems, in particular account-to-account retail payments
- An understanding of the wider impact of regulation on consumers and businesses, and the ability to look at issues from the perspective of the consumer
- An ability to identify and exercise judgement in collaboration with a multi-disciplinary team, including economists, lawyers, payment specialists as well as policy advisors
- Ability to understand the wider strategy of a project and to tailor the economic advice to inform and deliver the desired strategy
Desirable
- Experience managing teams of economists delivering a coherent set of economic analayis
- Postgraduate qualifications in economics or related disciplines
- Experience of applying competition analysis in economic regulated sectors and a broad understanding of different aspects of economic regulation
- An excellent understanding of competition law and/or regulatory policy
- An up-to-date understanding of the regulatory developments in the UK payments landscape and knowledge of the Payment Systems Regulator
- Familiarity with the key stakeholders in the UK payments landscape
The PSR’s values and diversity
All members of PSR are expected to demonstrate the PSR Values of Integrity, Unity, Engagement, Knowledge & Purpose.
In order to represent the people and organisations that we serve, we are committed to building and sustaining a diverse and inclusive workplace. Our commitment includes disability, ethnicity, LGBTQ+ and gender identity, mental health and social mobility issues.
We are proud signatories of the Women in Finance Charter, we hold the Level 2 Carer Confident accreditation from Carers UK and we signed the Social Mobility Pledge in June 2020.
Useful information
- These roles are graded as Technical Specialist – Regulatory
- The role is based in London
- The role offers a competitive salary and a comprehensive benefits package
- The closing date for the role is 23.59 on the 7th July 2024
- Want to know what it is like to work at the PSR? Check out this short video PSR recruitment video 2022 - YouTube
- If you are interested in learning more about the role, for internal applicants please contact Katie Ayling - katie.ayling@fca.org.uk for external applicants please contact Ifrah Azam on ifrah.azam@fca.org.uk
- Please note, applications must be submitted through our online portal. We are unable to accept applications sent via email
Got a question?
If you are interested in learning more about the role, for internal applicants please contact Katie Ayling at katie.ayling@fca.org.uk and for external applicants please contact Beth Haydon at beth.haydon@fca.org.uk
Please note – Applications must be submitted through our online portal. Applications sent via email will not be accepted.
Conflicts of interest
All applicants to the PSR are required to demonstrate that they do not have other interests likely to conflict with their responsibilities as an employee of the PSR.
You should declare any potential conflict of interest as early as possible in the selection process (via the named recruitment contact), and also disclose information or personal connections that, if appointed, might be open to misperception.
Any potential conflicts of interest will not prevent candidates going forward to interview but may, if appropriate, be explored during the interview to establish how the candidate would address the issue(s) should they be successful in their application.
