A Zopa credit card
(Picture: Zopa)London fintech unicorn Zopa has bucked the trend of layoffs sweeping across the tech sector as it vowed to continue hiring and raise minimum salaries more than 20% to £27,000 to attract and retain talent, the Standard can reveal.
The salary raise is part of a package of new benefits, including two weeks’ pet bereavement leave, flexible Bank Holidays for people who do not celebrate Christmas and Easter, and allowing employees to work abroad as digital nomads up to four months a year.
The credit card and loan provider has grown its headcount 27% to over 600 employees in the past year, according to LinkedIn data, and plans to grow further in the coming months.
Zopa CEO Jaidev Janardana told the Standard: “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.
“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 overhired in the way others have done.”
More than 140,000 staff at tech companies have been made redundant since the start of the year, according to online tracker layoff, while numerous other London fintechs such as Zilch have been planning waves of redundancies amid a drop-off in consumer sentiment.
Founded in 2005, London Bridge-based Zopa had been planning a stock market listing before the end of the year, but Janardana said current market conditions meant an IPO was not on the horizon in the near-term.
“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.”
