About the job

Job summary

As Great Britain's regulator for the energy industry, Ofgem exists to ensure a safe, secure and sustainable energy supply to British households and businesses

Join us in a new role at the heart of our newly established Financial Supervision team. Operating within the Financial Resilience and Controls division, you will have the opportunity to build positive relationships with key, allocated suppliers, foster financial resilience and undertake supervision of domestic and non-domestic energy suppliers.

 As a Senior Financial Advisor, you will play a key role in the Financial Supervision team. Your primary responsibility will be to develop and deliver supervisory strategies throughout the year and lead meetings which include executives and key board members. Working closely with the Retail Market Intelligence and Policy teams, you’ll develop proposals for suppliers and assess the impact of the changing policy landscapes.  You may also be granted the opportunity to manage, coach and provide direction to a small team of supervisors.

In this role, you will develop the Financial Supervisory Strategy for your assigned suppliers, effectively communicate with affected suppliers during periods of heightened risks, deliver work outcomes and assess the financial interdependencies between both licensed and wider companies.

We are seeking a candidate who can analyse financial risks, see the bigger picture and be proactive in setting targets. You will understand capital structures, corporate finance and credit analysis in a regulatory and economic environment. Holding fantastic communication skills, you will thrive in fast-paced settings, creating well-organised, clearly structured targets and have the ability to communicate complex information and data to others, simply. You’ll be a fast thinker with good judgement to resolve a wide range of issues promptly. You will have a proven track record of delivering excellent results through developing and maintaining strong relationships with colleagues and key stakeholders. Your knowledge of the broader macro environment and risks to energy suppliers’ business models in a financial supervisory role is desired.

Ofgem has a culture of inclusion that encourages, supports and celebrates the diverse voices and experiences of our colleagues. It fuels our innovation and helps ensure we can best represent the consumers and the communities we serve. Everyone is welcome - as an inclusive workplace, our employees are comfortable bringing their authentic selves to work.

Job description

Ofgem works on behalf of energy consumers to ensure that every household and business in the UK can rely on a safe energy supply.   

The Financial Resilience and Controls Directorate 

A financially resilient retail energy market will benefit consumers by ensuring a better balance of risks between supply licensees and consumers and, in doing so, reduce the likelihood and cost of widespread failures. A resilient, profitable, investable market is also essential for the sustainable competition Ofgem wants to see, where energy retailers have incentives to innovate in the pursuit of net zero and receive a reasonable profit as they drive up consumer service standards. 

The Financial Supervision team is a new, dynamic, friendly, and inclusive within the Financial Resilience and Controls Directorate. The supervision function will play a pivotal role in working with suppliers to understand and mitigate potential issues without the need for enforcement activity. It is envisaged to be done by furthering open, constructive and proactive relationships with suppliers, enabling Ofgem to deepen its understanding of suppliers’ financial risks and mitigating strategies, and form views and judgements based on analysis of a broader and more holistic base of evidence.    

Ofgem has a culture of inclusion that encourages, supports and celebrates the diverse voices and experiences of our colleagues. It fuels our innovation and helps ensure we can best represent the consumers and the communities we serve. Everyone is welcome - as an inclusive workplace, our employees are comfortable bringing their authentic selves to work.  

Purpose 

• This role is for a Senior Financial Advisor in the Financial Supervision team. 
• It will sit in the Financial Resilience & Controls division that focuses on fostering financial resilience and undertakes supervision of domestic and non-domestic energy suppliers.  
• In our division, we have supervisors dedicated to the direct supervision of each UK licensed supplier.  

Person specification

Key Responsibilities:  

• As a Senior Financial Advisor in the Financial Supervision team, you will have supervisory responsibilities for your allocated suppliers and the opportunity to develop and deliver the supervisory strategy throughout the year. You will lead meetings with the firm, including with key Executives and Board members. 
• The work plan for the coming year includes a number of interesting supervisory reviews with a financial resilience and operational resilience nexus.  
• You will work closely with Retail Market Intelligence and Policy colleagues on proposals for the suppliers and assess the impact of the changing policy landscape on the regulated suppliers’ business. You will also collaborate closely with other teams to manage interdependencies, risks and resourcing to develop and deploy the supervisory strategy. 
• You will lead on some workstreams and collaborate with colleagues or coach more junior staff on other workstreams. 

 Key Outputs and Deliverables  

• Use your credit and finance expertise to understand the financial resilience of complex company financial structures adopted by domestic and non-domestic suppliers. 
• Assess the financial interdependencies between both licensed and other companies within group structures, with the support of the Regulatory Finance team that provides technical advice relating to company financial structures and derivatives within Ofgem. 
• Develop and deploy the financial supervisory strategy for your assigned suppliers, ensuring key stakeholders are updated in a timely fashion. 
• Coordinate response and lead relationship with affected Suppliers during period of heightened perceived risk to their financial stability.  
• Develops, plans and delivers work outcomes, including clear and transparent work objectives, milestones and success metrics. 
• Take ownership for own continued expert development and other team members’ professional development relating to financial resilience and supervision by: 

Essential Criteria

• Extensive experience and understanding of capital structures, corporate finance and/or credit analysis, preferably through a regulatory and economic environment or via a financial institution ideally (although not necessarily) in sectors relevant to Ofgem’s work. (LEAD) 
• Ability to utilise analysis of firms’ financial risk management to form judgements and support the team to deliver potentially difficult messages to senior executives and directors. 
• Pro-active, well organised, comfortable setting targets and delivering under own initiative, whilst ensuring the needs of key stakeholders are met. 
• Good judgement and the ability to cover a wide variety of issues, focusing on key issues with experience of making key decisions.  
• Ability to process and communicate complex information and data simply and clearly. 
• Have a recognised finance qualification, e.g. CCAB, CFA, MSc Finance or have relevant finance or commercial experience, that can be demonstrated by proven record of high performance and substantial achievements in past positions. 
• Stakeholder and relationship management – Experience of/ability to influence a range of internal and external stakeholders, with a track record of delivering results through building and maintaining strong working relationships. 

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £45,614, OFGEM contributes £12,315 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.

When you press the ‘Apply now’ button, you will be asked to complete personal details (not seen by the sift panel), your career history and qualifications.  

You will then be asked to provide a 1250 word ‘personal statement’ evidencing how you meet the essential and desirable skills and capabilities listed in the role profile. Please ensure you demonstrate clearly, within your supporting statement, how you meet each of the essential and desirable skills and capabilities. 

The Civil Service values honesty and integrity and expect all candidates to abide by these principles. Ofgem take any incidences of cheating very seriously. Please ensure all examples provided are of your own experience. Any instances of plagiarism or other forms of cheating will be investigated and, if proven, the relevant applications will be withdrawn from the process. 

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.