Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Zopa Bank: 2025 Annual Update
At Zopa Bank, our purpose is to be the home of money for our customers. We aim to be a place where financial products deliver good value and managing money is made effortless, and deep and long-lasting relationships mean customers are left confident about their choices.
But our mission goes beyond financial products. We’re building a fairer financial world, and that same spirit of fairness and inclusivity is at the heart of how we build our teams and culture.
We’re proud to provide an environment where individuality is celebrated and where Zopians can do their best work, regardless of race, ethnicity, faith, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, disability, gender, or age.
Increasing Female Representation
Our commitment to gender representation remains strong. Since signing the Women in Finance Charter in 2018, we have consistently pushed beyond the pledge of 33% women in senior management (defined as leadership team and their direct reports) and are thrilled to report that we have again achieved our representation target of 40% (as at 31st August 2025).
We will maintain this through our ongoing initiatives that place diversity and female representation at the forefront of our strategy, including:
Women in Business Network – Our first employee resource group has created a three-pillar approach to drive efficiency and encourage a more equitable environment through targeted events and projects supporting careers; leadershipand management development; life events and work-life balance; and building community connections.
Encouraging allyship – Through targeted comms at times such as International Women’s Day, we encourage men to step into allyship roles, women and all genders to explore barriers and opportunities, leaders to embed gender equity in organisational success, and all employees to gain practical tools to challenge bias.
Gender Equity Collective – Our work with this specialist consultancy has deepened from masterclasses into a robust diagnostic exercise. Using focus groups and data collection across all levels of the business, we are now reviewing findings, recommended actions, and shaping a long-term strategic direction for DE&I at Zopa.
Talent Pipeline & Inclusive Hiring – We continue to decode job ads to remove gender bias, ensure diverse candidate pipelines, and train interviewers in bias mitigation.
DE&I Training Workshops: Last year we ran nine training workshops to support our DE&I goals and to help employees better understand and support their peers.
From Gender Parity to Pay Parity
With above industry average female representation in its leadership team, Zopa Bank is a leading player among UK digital banks when it comes to senior female representation. Across the business, women are some of our most engaged employees, with 78% proud to work for Zopa Bank and 81% recommending it as a place to work.
While we pay equally across like-for-like roles and continue to have more women in our business than ever before, our median gender pay gap remains higher than what we’d like at 40.7% (as of April 2025).
This is mainly a product of the distribution of women across our firm, as we have more men in tech and product roles (which have a higher market pay) and more women in customer service roles (which typically have lower salaries).
In the last year, we have focused on hiring entry level talent – particularly women – in our product and technology functions, which is key to futureproofing our talent pipeline regardless of gender. We have successfully achieved 50% female representation in entry level hiring, but in turn have seen a temporary impact on our pay gap. We anticipate this will improve in years to come as these women progress in their careers at Zopa.
When we look at our gender pay gap separating out our customer operations team, we observe a steep reduction in our overall gender pay gap.
More broadly, we have increased female representation in our lower middle (1%) and upper middle (3%) pay quartiles as we continue to develop a diverse pipeline across all levels. Notably, between May-24 and April-25, 44.5% of all joiners were female.
The UK Financial Services industry shares the long-term challenge of closing the gender pay gap and we know that there is still more work to do.
We continuously ensure our workplace enables female employees to thrive, and in turn, to reduce our gender pay gap. Some of this work includes:
Driving Diversity and Inclusion: We continue to make further investments to improve our diversity and inclusion efforts, building on existing initiatives in place and demonstrating our ongoing commitment to do more in this area.
Executive Sponsorship: In 2025, we appointed our Chief Strategy Officer, Merve Ferrero, as the dedicated executive sponsor for DE&I. This formalises DE&I leadership at the highest level of Zopa, ensuring accountability and visibility across the organisation.
Mentoring Programme: Now in its fourth year, our mentoring programme has been enhanced to reflect DE&I priorities. We created a mentor pool representing the richness of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives across Zopa, which led to over 70 mentoring partnerships in 2025 that provide invaluable support to colleagues.
Leadership Development: Our Leadership Academy continues to nurture emerging leaders through structured six-month programmes, alongside tailored leadership development in Operations and Technology. These cohorts then form alumni groups and collaborate past their graduation date. The most recent cohort was 55% male and 45% female.
Ethnic Representation: Zopa employees come from 60 nationalities, with 33% identifying as ethnically diverse. Black representation remains at 4% – in line with UK averages, but not where we want to be. Our TA team has dedicated DE&I targets, and we encourage disclosure through engagement surveys to track and improve representation.
Inclusive Benefits: We continue to ensure our benefits to meet diverse needs, including:
16 weeks’ new parent leave for all parents (including adoption).
Premium subscription to Anya, the new parent support app.
15 days’ bereavement leave (including 2 days for pets).
Flexible bank holidays aligned to personal or religious needs.
Group Income Protection.
Will writing and free mortgage advice services.
Generous health cash plan for everyday medical costs.
Inclusive Workspaces: This year we’ve invested significant time in designing our new Canary Wharf office, applying a DE&I lens at all stages. The space is DDA compliant, ensuring accessibility, and we’ve ensured our neurodivergent community’s needs are fully considered. From lighting and quiet zones to thoughtful layouts, the new office reflects our belief that inclusivity must be built into the work environment.
Looking Ahead
Zopa Bank today continues to offer an environment of high trust, inclusivity, and support, empowering Zopians to thrive both personally and professionally. Looking ahead to 2026, we will continue investing in our people proposition and apply the actions and insights from our DE&I diagnostic to further strengthen our long-term strategy. We remain committed to fairness, equal representation, and inclusion throughout our work.
Signed,
Iain Kendrick, Chief People Officer at Zopa Bank
