Zopa continues hiring and updates employee benefits
Zopa has committed to continue hiring and introduced a range of employee benefits having already committed to raise minimum salaries by more than 20 per cent to £27,000.
The former peer-to-peer lender-turned-digital bank told the Evening Standard that alongside raising salaries, it will introduce two weeks’ pet bereavement leave, flexible Bank Holidays for people who do not celebrate Christmas and Easter and enable employees to work abroad for up to four months a year.
The paper estimated that Zopa had grown its headcount by 27 per cent to more than 600 employees in the past year.
The salary increases were announced in September alongside a pledge to give employees earning less than £50,000 per year a one-off winter bonus payment of £500.
Read more: Zopa raises minimum pay and confirms winter bonus
“For the majority of fintechs, the philosophy was raising a lot of capital and using that to grow in the hope of being profitable some day in the future”, Zopa chief executive Jaidev Janardana told the Evening Standard.
“In a world where there was an abundance of capital and interest rates were low that seemed like a good approach…[but] for us the profitability horizon was never too far away — we have taken a prudent approach to growth and haven’t over hired in the way others have done.”
Zopa’s commitment to hiring, to ongoing pay increases and improved benefits bucks the wider trend in fintech. Speaking to Peer2Peer Finance News last week, Jobbio chief executive Stephen Quinn warned of massive redundancies across the sector, particularly in B2C fintechs.
“They’ve made something like 20 to 25 per cent of the typical number of redundancies. They’re letting go of thousands of people,” he said.
Read more: Fintech job seekers advised to look to B2B businesses
Zopa was founded in 2005 and transformed from a P2P lender into a fully-fledged bank after it received a UK banking licence in June 2020.
Janardana told the Standard that despite long-term plans to list on the stock market, an initial public offering (IPO) is on hold while market conditions are uncertain.
“For us the IPO was never a destination but a milestone,” he said.
“I still see that as our destination, but we are lucky in that we have very supportive investors – we’ve always said we will pick the right time.”
Read more: Zopa eyes acquisitions in different sectors
