Our Story
Hello there. We’re Zopa.
We started our journey back in 2005, building the first ever peer-to-peer lending company. Fast forward to 2020 and we launched Zopa Bank. A bank that listens to what our customers don’t like about finance and does the opposite. We’re redefining what it feels like to work in finance. Our vision for a new era of banking puts people front and centre — we’ve built a business that empowers everyone to aim high, every day, to move finance forward. Find out more about our fantastic offerings at
Zopa.com!
We’re incredibly proud of our achievements and none of it would be possible without the amazing team here. It’s not just industry awards we’re winning, we’ve also been named in the top three UK’s Most Loved Workplaces.
If you embrace unconventional challenges, are unafraid to think differently and are driven to make an outsized impact, you’ll thrive here at Zopa, so join us, and make it count. Want to see us in action? Follow us on Instagram @zopalife
We're looking for a Financial Crime Strategy Manager to play a pivotal role in shaping and evolving our financial crime framework. Reporting to the Head of Financial Crime, you'll act as a trusted deputy, leading major strategic initiatives, influencing senior stakeholders, and helping build the next generation of financial crime controls across the bank.
This isn't a traditional oversight role. You'll work at the heart of the business, partnering with Product, Engineering, Data and Operations teams to design smarter controls, improve customer outcomes and enable safe, sustainable growth.
A day in the life:
- Deputise for the Head of Financial Crime across leadership, product and governance forums.
- Lead major financial crime initiatives from concept to delivery, including transaction monitoring, screening, customer risk assessment and control optimisation.
- Act as a senior decision-maker for complex financial crime matters within delegated authority.
- Design and enhance financial crime controls across KYC, screening, monitoring, SARs and customer risk assessment.
- Partner closely with Product and Engineering teams to embed effective controls into new products and customer journeys.
- Use data, insight and emerging technologies to improve effectiveness, efficiency and customer experience.
- Represent the 1st Line position with credibility and influence, working closely with Risk, Compliance and senior stakeholders.
- Mentor and develop colleagues, helping build capability across the wider financial crime function.
About you:
- Significant experience leading financial crime strategy, controls or operations within banking, fintech, payments or a regulated financial services environment.
- Strong expertise across key financial crime disciplines, including transaction monitoring, KYC/CDD, screening, customer risk assessment and SARs.
- Experience operating as a senior decision-maker and influencing stakeholders at all levels.
- A product-minded approach, with the ability to balance risk management, customer outcomes and commercial objectives.
- Strong understanding of the UK financial crime regulatory landscape.
- Excellent communication skills and the ability to simplify complex topics for diverse audiences.
Why this role?
This is an opportunity to help define the future of financial crime at one of the UK's leading digital banks. You'll have genuine ownership, visibility and influence, working on high-impact initiatives that shape how we prevent financial crime while delivering great customer experiences.
If you're excited by building, improving and challenging the status quo, we'd love to hear from you.
#LI-LK1
At Zopa we value flexible ways of working.
We value face-to-face collaboration and a good work-life balance. This hybrid role requires you to come to our London office 2-3 days a week.
You'll also have the option of working from abroad for up to 120 days a year!* But no matter where you are, we’ll make sure you’ve got everything you need to thrive, both in your work and home life, from day one.
*Subject to having the right to work in the country of choice
Diversity Statement
Zopa is proud to offer a workplace free from discrimination. Diversity of experience, perspectives, and backgrounds leads to better products for our customers and a unique company culture for our people. We are made up of nearly 50 nationalities, have a DE&I forum made up of Zopians wanting to make a difference and we are proud of our culture where everyone can bring their full self to work. Our approach to DE&I is reflected in our hiring process so please let us know if you require any reasonable adjustments.
Our approach to AI in interviews
At Zopa, AI isn't something we're testing out — it's part of how we work every day. As a proud partner of Jobs 2030, we're committed to building AI fluency across our workforce, and we expect Zopians to use AI as part of how they do their jobs.
Because of that, we want to be transparent about how we think about AI use during our hiring process.
Behavioural and competency-based interviews: please don't use AI. These conversations are designed to understand you — your experiences, your judgment, and how you've approached real situations. An AI-generated answer can't tell us that. What it can do is get in the way of us finding out whether we're the right fit for each other.
Technical interviews: it depends on the role. Some technical stages actively welcome AI use, others don't. Your Talent Partner will let you know what's expected at each stage. Where AI is part of the assessment, we'll be interested not just in the outcome, but in how you used it – the tools you chose, your reasoning, and the decisions you made along the way.
