Senior Credit Strategy Analyst – POS Finance Full Time

Zopa Limited

Hello, we’re Zopa Embeded Finance (ZEF) part of the Zopa Group.

Early in 2023 Zopa Bank acquired Divide Buy, a market leading BNPL platform. Now part of Zopa Group, we’re creating BNPL 2.0, the offering will combine technology and fintech innovation to enable instant decisions and fully integrated consumer journeys with consumer protection, credit checks and safeguards of a regulated bank.

ZEF are on a step-change growth trajectory. Alongside our best-in-class POS tech solution we have the scale, trust, and market-leading credit capabilities of one of the UK’s top consumer lenders. We are uniquely positioned in the market with rapid growth and bold ambitions for the next three years where this role will be pivotal in spearheading our growth.

Join us as we embark on this new chapter, harnessing the strengths of both Zopa and ZEF to create cutting-edge financial solutions that truly benefit our customers.

You will join a high performing risk analytics team responsible for driving step-change improvements in credit performance by developing risk models, hypothesis testing, and monitoring portfolio trends.

Collaboration is key at Zopa which means you’ll work closely with our cross-functional teams including data science, product, and engineers to develop and drive growth strategies, influence strategic decisions and identify new opportunities through the application of leading-edge analytical techniques.

We look for bright individuals with a passion for translating numbers into business opportunities and delivering insights to drive decision-making – if this resonates with you, we’d love to hear from you!

A day in the life:

• As a Senior Associate in Credit Risk, you will be entrusted to lead on our most complex and highest impact projects.
• You are empowered to think outside the box and devise creative, innovative solutions to the problems we tackle.
• You own a broad remit across credit strategy, credit policy, affordability, fraud, valuations, and pricing.
• Zopa offers a broad range of lending products, including unsecured personal loans (UPL), credit cards, secured loans for the purchase of a car and point-of-sale finance, which all pose different analytical challenges.
• You work in a wider cross-functional product, credit, and data science team, so you will have the opportunity to work alongside, learn from and mentor some of the brightest minds and friendliest people in the industry!
• You work with some of the best tech in the industry, such as powerful Python instances for data analysis and machine learning and Redshift for data warehousing.
• All our decisioning systems are built in-house, meaning that we have nearly unlimited flexibility in what we can implement.

Responsibilities include:

• Optimising credit decisioning for our point-of-sale finance business, either through the deployment of a new risk scorecard understanding the risks involved or designing and implementing a change to credit policy
• Using advanced statistical techniques to predict customer behaviour or forecast future demand
• Shaping and enhancing our credit policy, and working with the product and tech teams to deliver these changes
• Managing the pricing & commercial discussions with our Product / Sales team and merchants we are partnering with
• Analysing the performance of our portfolio, identifying any areas of improvement, and recommending strategy changes based on these findings
• Building NPV & pricing optimization models to inform lending decisions while understanding their inherent limitations
• Collaborating with our fraud team to stay updated on latest trends and exploring potential enhancements to our fraud strategy
• Formulating strategies to improve our affordability policy and ensuring we continually deliver good customer outcomes
• Mentoring junior team members, fostering their growth and development within the team

About you:

• You have 3+ years’ experience doing credit risk analysis or pricing in a consumer lending environment, preferably for a point-of-sale finance lender
• You have a strong ability in manipulating and analysing large datasets using SQL and/or Python
• You are experienced in visualization and storytelling through data (Tableau experience is a plus)
• You have a passion for translating numbers into business opportunities and delivering insights to drive decision-making
• You are a structured and holistic problem-solver, and possess strong time management skills
• You have an insatiable curiosity and a relentless drive to learn, improve, and share knowledge with others
• You are able to work collaboratively with cross-functional teams, including tech, data science, finance and product

This role can be based in Stoke or London. If in London, you may be required to travel to Stoke a few days a month.

The ZEF offices are based in Newcastle-under-Lyme with teams working in a hybrid manner.The employee benefits at ZEF include:

– Private Health Cover, including Eye & Dental

– Retail & Entertainment Discounts

– Pension Contribution Scheme

– Life Assurance Cover

– Cycle to Work Scheme

– SmartTech Purchase Scheme

– Wellbeing Programme

– Relaxed Office Dress Code

– Pet friendly offices