Zopa Bank to make profit in its first year

Zopa expects its banking arm to make a profit in its first year of operation after high demand for banking services that are designed to be as easy to use as Netflix.

In its first 12 months, Zopa Bank has concentrated on the savings market, offering an account that can be set up in seven minutes.

As well as expecting to be profitable this year, Zopa Bank has become a top 10 credit card issuer in the UK, gaining more than 100,000 credit card customers in nine months. It has also attracted more than £400m in customer deposits.

Best known as a peer-to-peer lender, Zopa was launched in 2005 and has since built up a large customer base. It initially gained a UK banking licence with restrictions in December 2018. It achieved a full licence in June 2020, launching soon after.

Speaking to Computer Weekly last year, Didier Baclin, then chief product officer at Zopa, said the company was applying its tech know-how and machine learning to provide consumers with banking services that are as easy to use as Netflix and Amazon.

All banking services are available on the Zopa app, which was launched in 2018. It initially enabled borrowers to track loans, but Zopa decided the app would host all products and services going forward.

“We built a bank to better meet the needs of UK consumers and our year one success endorses that approach,” said Zopa CEO Jaidev Janardana. “We look forward to using the momentum that we have gained to expand our products and services further and to help more customers.”

“We built a bank to better meet the needs of UK consumers and our year one success endorses that approach”