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 driven and detail-oriented KYC Financial Crime Specialist to join our fast-paced Financial Crime Operations team. This is a hands-on role at the heart of our fincrime function, where you will be responsible for protecting the bank from financial crime by conducting Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD), assessing transaction activity, and ensuring our onboarding and ongoing customer checks are completed.
The successful candidate will be comfortable managing a varied caseload at pace, making sound risk-based decisions, and leveraging AI-powered tools to work efficiently without compromising quality or compliance.
This is a hybrid role – the team works in the office 3 days a week.
Your working week will consist of 7.5 hour shifts between 8 am and 8 pm, Monday to Friday, and you will be required to work one day of the weekend every other week, remotely. If you work a day at the weekend, you will receive a day off during the week.
The role also requires several bank holidays to be worked a year, with any bank holidays worked given back as time in lieu.
A day in the life:
- Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD): Conduct thorough, risk-proportionate investigations on customers including medium and high-risk customers, ensuring all critical due diligence information is obtained and documented to the required standard.
- Assess customers’ Source of Wealth (SoW) and Source of Funds (SoF), evaluating whether declared wealth and funds are consistent with their overall risk profile and transactional behaviour.
- Complete EDD reviews for Specially Interested Persons (SIPs), Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs), High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs), and customers subject to court orders or law enforcement enquiries.
- Customer Risk Assessment & Ongoing Monitoring: Manage a caseload of ongoing and onboarding customer risk review cases efficiently, maintaining high throughput without sacrificing investigative quality.
- Identify and escalate customers whose risk profile has materially changed, applying sound regulatory and commercial judgement.
- Adapt quickly to changing volumes and prioritisation needs, demonstrating resilience and flexibility in a fast-moving operational environment.
- PEP & Sanctions Screening: Conduct onboarding and ongoing name screening checks to accurately identify sanctioned individuals, PEPs, and Relatives and Close Associates (RCAs).
- Assess screening alerts with confidence and precision, escalating appropriately and completing EDD off the back of positive findings in line with policy and regulatory requirements.
- Maintain a strong understanding of sanctions regimes, including OFSI, OFAC, and UN designations, and their implications for customer relationships.
- Payment Screening: Conduct ad hoc screening on international inbound credits to ensure funds have not originated from a sanctioned entity or individual.
- Make timely, well-reasoned screening decisions, escalating potential matches in accordance with agreed procedures and within required timeframes.
- Maintain a strong understanding of sanctions regimes, including OFSI, OFAC, and UN designations, and their implications for customer relationships.
- Communication: The successful candidate will be required to handle both inbound and outbound phone-based & chat based interactions with customers as part of their daily responsibilities. This includes engaging with customers, addressing inquiries, and providing support or assistance to customer contacting regarding suspended accounts. Strong communication skills and the ability to manage phone calls effectively are essential for this role.
- AI-Assisted Investigations & Efficiency: Leverage AI-enabled monitoring and investigation tools as a core part of day-to-day activity, using them to identify patterns, generate case summaries, and support decision-making.
- Critically assess AI-generated outputs – including alerts, recommendations, and investigative summaries – applying professional judgement to ensure accuracy, regulatory alignment, and sound case decisions.
- Use insights from AI tools to support risk identification, drive investigation efficiency, and produce high-quality written summaries and recommendations.
- Contribute observations and feedback on AI tool performance to support the continuous improvement of monitoring systems and financial crime controls.
- Champion a forward-thinking, technology-positive approach within the team, helping to embed AI-assisted ways of working that enhance rather than replace human judgement.
About you:
- Experience in financial crime risk management, with a focus on EDD, AML, and/or KYC processes, ideally within a fintech, challenger bank, or regulated financial institution.
- Strong command of UK financial crime regulations, including the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA), Money Laundering Regulations (MLR 2017), and FCA guidelines on financial crime.
- In-depth knowledge of financial crime risk typologies, due diligence processes, transaction monitoring methodologies, and name screening best practice.
- Awareness of emerging financial crime trends relevant to the fintech sector, including crypto-asset risks, APP fraud, and sanctions evasion.
- Demonstrated experience working in a target-driven or high-throughput compliance operations environment.
- Strong analytical ability and meticulous attention to detail, with the capacity to assess complex financial transactions and identify potential financial crime typologies.
- Solid understanding of AML/KYC processes including transaction monitoring, adverse media screening, EDD, and PEP/sanctions screening.
- Ability to produce clear, well-structured written documentation, including investigation summaries, escalation reports, and risk assessments.
- Comfortable working with AI-powered compliance tools, and able to critically evaluate AI-generated outputs to support compliant case decisions.
- Thrives in a fast-paced, high-volume environment and demonstrates strong personal organisation and time management to meet case SLAs.
- Proactive and solutions-focused, with the initiative to flag issues early and adapt to changing priorities.
- Collaborative team player who builds effective relationships with internal stakeholders across compliance, operations, and technology teams, as well as external parties where required.
- Demonstrates professionalism and strict confidentiality at all times.
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 Manchester office 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.
#LI-LH1
