Head of Unsecured Loan Originations

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 are looking for a commercially focussed Product Director to join our Unsecured Personal Loan (UPL) tribe looking after all aspects of new customer acquisition. The role will span the entire funnel and require someone who is able to work closely with both analytical and technical teams to implement the experiences, features and decisioning to maintain our industry leading position in loans and grow our market share.

We launched our loan proposition nearly 20 years ago, starting as the UK’s first peer to peer lender before turbo charging our growth in 2020 as we transitioned into a bank. We are currently the largest open market lender and are always looking to challenge ourselves on how we can continue growing and putting our world class product in the hands of more customers.

This is a highly autonomous and high ownership role, leading multiple cross-functional software teams with support from product managers, analysts and partnerships team to build new go to market strategies. Your role will be owning the UPL originations roadmap that will need to carefully balance big bets, more guaranteed growth and investment in our platform/people. You will also own the commercial management of UPL where you will be recommending pricing/strategic decisions to the senior management team. You will need to collaborate to get to the right answer, drawing on our best-in-class analytics customer insights and industry context to make sure the roadmap is always the best that it can be.

Despite having a great team around you, you will need to be happy and able to get your hands dirty as there are always opportunities that we could be looking at. This may involve building simple financial forecasts, validating commercial viability, facilitating/taking part in ideation sessions, collaborating with software engineering on the technical approach or, being in the middle of the launch of a large new project.

You will have 1 direct report and lead 2 x-functional engineering teams (~15 engineers) and set the direction for multiple analytical teams. You will need to be able to inspire these teams to deliver at their very best despite only directly line managing a small proportion of them. This will require diverse leadership skills that can empathise with a variety of viewpoints and draw the best out of the individuals.

This is an opportunity that can give a lot of scope to supercharge your career within a fast-scaling FinTech that is looking to IPO soon. If this challenge excites you, we'd love to hear from you!

A day in the life...

• Lead the unsecured personal loans originations teams, providing mentorship, coaching and support to ensure the team is aligned to Zopa’s goals and objectives.
• Manage the commercial outcomes for Zopa’s most profitable product.
• Collaborate across tech, analytics and design to make sure that your teams have a compelling roadmap that will deliver both short and long-term goals.
• Implement processes/frameworks to monitor and drive insight on our originations funnel and how the different aspects are performing.
• Influence teams outside of UPL to understand wider context and make sure that we capitalise on opportunities to solve the same issue or drive the same benefit across multiple areas with one change. You will also need to drive X-tribe prioritisation and stakeholder management given how our systems fit together.
• Stay up to date with industry and wider market trends that may inform our strategy.
• Build and maintain relationships with key stakeholders, industry bodies, partners and other market participants.

About you...

• As an experienced leader, you are enthusiastic about the journey we’re on. You aim to make a significant impact, showcasing the products you’ve built and their successes. Even if you haven’t developed a product from scratch, you can highlight the metrics you’ve significantly improved for previous products.
• Your analytical skills are highly developed, enabling you to balance commercial considerations with risk management effectively.
• You’re eager to collaborate as part of a cross-functional team to achieve your shared goal. You consider engineers, designers, analysts, and other key stakeholders as your essential teammates.
• Your passion for data is evident – you understand that informed decisions stem from insights, whether from our data warehouse, research, or other sources. You excel at synthesising this information to create compelling commercial business cases.
• You are outcomes-focused, with a bias for action that ensures continuous testing and learning towards our goals. Perfection is not your priority; progress is.
• You have strong experience managing the P&L (profit and loss) of a product, area or feature, carefully balancing both long and short-term outcomes.
• Delivering high-quality work at pace is second nature to you. You thrive in fast-paced environments and your ability to manage a diverse range of stakeholders is exceptional, fostering collaboration and alignment across the board.