Zopa raises minimum pay and confirms winter bonus
Zopa has increased its minimum salary to £27,000 to help its staff cope with the cost-of-living crisis.
The former peer-to-peer lending platform, which is now a digital bank, also confirmed that employees earning less than £50,000 per year will receive a one-off winter bonus payment of £500.
“This decision reaffirms our unwavering commitment to our people’s wellbeing and to mitigating [sic] the impacts of this unprecedented cost-of-living crisis among those who may feel it most,” Zopa said in a post on social networking site LinkedIn.
Read more: Zopa Bank deposits pass £2bn
A source familiar with the matter told Peer2Peer Finance News that the move was a direct response to the current inflationary pressures.
“There is a real sense of pride and community around this,” he said, adding that this was in “direct contrast” to some of Zopa’s competitors which have recently announced downsizing programmes and layoffs.
The move by Zopa comes as other challengers across financial services have announced redundancies. Klarna, for instance, has already laid off more than 700 people in 2022.
Zopa, by comparison, has been working to bolster its employee benefits during recent months. In May, the company rolled out a workplace flexibility policy which permits up to 120 days working from overseas.
Separately, the company recently announced a new partnership with ClearScore, with the two firms working to tackle the ongoing cost of living crisis within the UK.
Read more: Zopa and ClearScore team up to tackle cost-of-living crisis
Aiming to bolster financial resilience, the partnership is set to focus on four key elements, including credit, savings, switching utilities and debt consolidation.
Elsewhere on Monday (26 September), rival Metro Bank – which acquired P2P lender RateSetter in 2020 – announced that 98 per cent of its employees will receive a 2.75 per cent increase to their salary.
Chief executive Daniel Frumkin said that the leadership team at Metro Bank felt that a salary increase would provide the best possible assistance to colleagues throughout the ongoing challenges rather than a one-off payment.
Read more: Zopa’s P2P business posted £6m loss in final year
The salary increase was funded by the saving the bank made from the UK government’s decision to reverse the national insurance increase, as well as an additional contribution from the company, Metro Bank said.
It will be independent of the staff pay review due in March 2023.
“The announcement by the chancellor has helped us to fund that increase and it is only right that we pass that saving on to our biggest asset, our people,” he said.