Zopa for Business – Risk Lead

Overview

In this 1st Line of Defence role, you will lead and shape onboarding and oversight risk frameworks for Auto, Payments, and Retail Finance partners. You’ll partner with Product and Engineering to digitise controls, turning risk appetite into measurable governance. You’ll monitor partner risk across the full lifecycle and communicate complex risk insights to senior stakeholders. This role is pivotal to embedding risk-informed decision-making in a high-growth banking environment.

Pay / Benefits

• hybrid working (London office 2-3 days a week)
• flexible optional abroad work up to 120 days a year
• supportive culture and DE&I emphasis

Responsibilities

• Own onboarding risk frameworks for key distribution partners
• Design and run a fast, risk-based onboarding model across Auto, Payments and Retail Finance
• Define risk appetite guardrails, decision authorities, and minimum controls for partner onboarding
• Ensure partner onboarding and ongoing management risks are captured in the bank’s risk taxonomy
• Embed data-driven risk management with KRIs/KCIs/KPIs and governance-ready MI
• Build monitoring with early warning indicators to manage risk across partner lifecycles
• Provide structured risk analysis and recommendations to balance risk and reward
• Drive automation and tooling with Product and Engineering to digitise onboarding and monitoring workflows
• Demonstrate continuous control improvement by addressing weaknesses and learning from incidents
• Act as a commercial risk partner, offering clear trade-off analysis to enable growth within appetite
• Cultivate strong cross-functional partnerships across 1LoD/2LoD and business teams to influence senior stakeholders

Key requirements

• Deep experience designing and operating risk-based onboarding and oversight frameworks for third parties or distributors
• Strong capability in risk MI: KRIs/KCIs/KPIs, thresholds, early warning indicators
• Proven track record partnering with Product/Engineering to implement automation and system controls
• Confident communicator able to present complex risk analyses to governance forums
• People leadership experience: coaching, prioritisation, performance management

• confident communicator
• leadership and coaching
• cross-functional collaboration
• risk MI and governance reporting
• KRIs/KCIs/KPIs, thresholds and early warning indicators
• automation and system controls

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