Senior Financial Crime Investigation and Mule Risk Strategy Lead
Zopa
Full-time
On-site
Manchester, United Kingdom
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're looking for a Senior Fraud and Financial Crime Lead to join our mission to make money work better for millions of customer. In this pivotal role, you'll be at the forefront of protecting our customers and Zopa from financial crime and fraud while ensuring we deliver the seamless, human experience we're known for.
Reporting into our new Manchester office, you'll set-up and lead our Financial Crime Investigation Unit (FIU) and drive our mule risk strategy across our entire product ecosystem - from current accounts, loans, savings, credit cards, and car finance products. This is your chance to shape how a modern bank thinks about and tackles fraud in an increasingly digital world.
As our Senior Financial Crime and Fraud Lead, you'll be responsible for identifying, investigate and disrupt organised crime activities and will be the architect of our defence strategy, working directly with our Director of Fraud to keep our customers safe while enabling our business to grow boldly.
A day in the life:
- Strategic Leadership
- Be hands-on whilst, being responsible for establishing the FIU as a function. Devise prioritisation approach for triaging work into the FIU (including escalations from Operations Teams) and ensure that top priorities are addressed.
- Act as Zopa's subject matter expert in fraud and financial crime typologies conducting in-depth investigations into arising trends and advising stakeholders on emerging threats; whilst staying abreast of regulatory changes and industry best practices.
- Own and evolve Zopa’s Strategy to identify, investigate, and disrupt mule accounts. Maintain up-to-date awareness of emerging mule trends, typologies, and organised fraud risks impacting FinTech and Financial institutions.
- Hands-on Delivery
- Use internal data and external insight to perform in-depth financial crime investigations to uncover emerging threats and drive continuous improvement, identify enhancement opportunities and share this insight with key stakeholders to feed into product roadmaps and into prioritization decisions.
- Monitor, analyse, and report on mule trends, create effective strategies to minimise our Fraud and Financial Crime risk exposure. Identify opportunities for improvements, system enhancements, and control strengthening.
- Investigate & size exposure to existing and emerging threats, identify opportunities for improvements in our control framework to better mitigate the risks identified. Support regulatory audits, internal reviews, and ad-hoc reporting requirements.
- Cross-functional Impact
- Champion industry collaboration, build and maintain strong networks and partnerships to keep Zopa at the forefront of fraud and financial crime prevention and detection activities
- Represent the bank at industry and law enforcement meetings, build / maintain network of contacts to aid investigative work & help more accurately assess Zopa’s exposure to new and emerging threats
- Partner with Product, Tech, Operations, and Risk teams across both First and Second Lines of Defence to embed robust controls into everything we build.
About you:
- You're a financial crime and fraud expert who thrives on solving complex problems and turning challenges into opportunities. You combine strategic thinking with hands-on delivery, and you're energised by working in a fast-paced, collaborative environment.
- Essential experience
- Extensive experience in Financial Crime and Fraud typologies and their modus operandi, in-depth knowledge of regulations and compliance requirements. Knowledge must have been developed having worked within the banking industry, whilst collaborating with colleagues from law enforcement, security, government.
- Experience in setting up a FIU and have hands-on experience in conducting investigations, knowing when to stop digging, when data is sufficient for the purpose of the analysis, when to further validate assumptions without leaping to conclusions.
- Have up to date knowledge of emerging mule trends, typologies, and financial crime risks impacting the FinTech and Financial institutions.
- You'll thrive if you
- Love working collaboratively with cross-functional teams to solve complex problems.
- Translate findings into effective summaries, reports, action plans to communicate output of the investigation and drive action.
- Have an inquisitive mind and enjoy analysing large dataset to draw meaningful conclusions. Communicate findings to drive action to a non-technical audience into clear, actionable insights, making compelling arguments using data to affect change.
#LI-LK1
Please note, this role requires participation in an on-call rota to manage fraud and financial crime risk events outside of standard working hours.
We’re expanding!
From September 2025, Zopa will be opening a brand-new office in Manchester at WeWork, Dalton Place, 29 John Dalton Street, M2 6WF.
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 2-3 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.