Chewing the fat, shooting the breeze, having a natter - call it what you like, talking to people is darn important and everyone should do it as often as they can (except in libraries). We talk to our members as much as possible, through our blog and discussion board and by getting people to email contactus@zopa.com if anything's on their mind.
A rather belated blog from us… (hanging head in shame)
We won the Webby award for Financial Services. Huzzah!!
Thank you to all the borrowers and lenders for helping make Zopa what it is.
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If you haven’t already voted for us you have until tomorrow to get your voice heard!
We’ve been nominated in the Banking/Bill Paying section (which we won last year) AND in the Financial Services category. You can vote for us in both categories and we promise to come back with a fetching photo should we win.
So, vote Zopa, you know it makes sense. 
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We’ve just been told we’ve been nominated for a Webby…. well, possibly 4. Read on.
Zopa.com has been nominated for The 12th Annual Webby Awards in the Banking/Bill Paying category and also the Financial Services category. Get us!
Last year we won the award for the Banking/Bill paying category and this year we’re canvassing for your help.
You have the chance to cast your vote for the People’s Voice award, you can vote for us in both categories. (You know you want to….)
“Choose one of the four ballots — Websites, Advertising, Film and Video or Mobile. Simply select a nominee from a category and click the cast my vote button on the ballot page for the category you are voting in. It’s that easy.”
You will just need to register on their site. (very quick and painless) Then scroll down the the Banking/Bill paying category, another little scroll and you’ll see Financial Services. Couple of clicks and away you go!
We’ll keep you updated. Thank you in advance for your votes!
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Had a very jolly evening on Wednesday night at a posh London Hotel when we won “one of the most sought-after prizes at a prestigious awards ceremony.” (According to the London Stock Exchange) This was for the “Most Threatening Non-Bank Competitor” (that’s quite a mouthful and what delicious irony) at the International Retail Banker Awards.
We were up against distinguished opposition such as Paypal, Vodafone, Wal-Mart and Prosper. There were lots of the great and the good of the banking industry at the awards ceremony and much talk in the acceptance speeches about the challenges banks face in restoring consumer trust, to which events like the failure of Northern Rock, Bear Stearns, continued tales of woe around US sub-prime losses, the resultant enormous write-downs at huge organisations like UBS and reduced bank liquidity have all contributed. The guest speaker also joked about how disconnected from consumers senior bankers were.
In my acceptance speech, while poking a little gentle fun about feeling very grown up to be spending the evening in a room full of bankers, I made a couple of serious points:
1. The decreasing consumer trust that so many had talked about was
playing directly into our hands. Before we launched Zopa, we talked a lot
about how an important challenge for our new, and therefore untrusted
business would be to build that trust, given that banks were clearly
trusted to be solid and secure if not always to look after their
customers’ best interests, but little did we know how recent events
would conspire to help us.
2. While we were delighted to be considered threatening by the banking
industry I doubted whether too many in the room actually felt too
threatened, perhaps more intrigued. I considered that if we were to be a
threat it wouldn’t be because we were explicitly anti-bank, more that we
were pro-consumer. Indeed if any of the banks would like to work with us
in that pro-consumer mission we would be delighted to welcome them.
Enough seriousness, a thoroughly good time was had by all, or at least
by me anyway - which can be evidenced by the fact that at some stage of
the night that followed, at some venue in W1, I managed to lose our
precious (and very tasteful) glass award. Oh dear, better take a look on
eBay….
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This afternoon we held a live webchat with Murray Bailey, our UK Director of Risk. If you couldn’t make it, don’t worry! We’d hate to see you miss out, so you can read the transcript here.
Enjoy!
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We’re hosting a live webchat at 2pm today with our UK Director of Risk, Murray Bailey.
If you have any Zopa credit questions you’d like to ask, please do come along. The chat will run for an hour and we look forward to seeing you there.
We’re using a group chat tool for this session so click here, choose the name you’ll use for the chat, and away we go!
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After celebrating our third birthday and then with two short weeks on the trot with Easter last week, we’re ready for the weekend and a bit of a sit down. We’ve also not blogged for a bit, so here’s a quick bit of reading for you on a Friday evening as you clutch your final cup of tea, grab a nice piece of cake and/or biscuit (check out nicecupofteaandasitdown for inspiration..)
Johnnie Moore pointed us towards Monevator and a recent post about Zopa and we thought it contained some food (pun intended, following biscuit reference earlier) for thought:
“Clearly, the credit crunch is having an effect on Zopa’s peer-to-peer lending market, either by:
*Increasing the number of Zopa borrowers, and so decreasing the pressure for lenders to compete via reducing rates.
*Reducing the number of lenders, and so reducing the range of offers for borrowers to choose from.
*Making lenders nervous, so we’re all raising our rates.
Plus I see a fourth, really unpleasant possibility:
More lower-quality (or even dishonest) borrowers are coming to Zopa.”
We really don’t think you need to worry about that fourth one. Our default rate remains at less than 0.1% and we’ve seen no evidence of increasing bad debt. With our state-of-the-art credit and affordability checks, we’re confident that our credit process will continue to perform well.
So, sit back, relax and have a really nice relaxing biscuit and tea filled weekend!
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The Zopa office will be closed while we all partake in a giant Easter egg hunt. We’ve been told it will start on Friday 21st March and we shouldn’t expect to be back until Tuesday 25th. Eggs in arms, ready to get back to work.
We’ve added a couple of threads about this on our discussion boards for borrowers and lenders.
tweet tweet
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Today we’ll be taking the Zopa site down for around 2 hours; from 4-6pm.
While we’re upgrading our current hardware, you will be able to view general Zopa pages but will not be able to view account information.
During this time, the discussion boards and blog will be available, so feel free to chat with other members of the Zopa community until we’re back!
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We’re holding an online chat on Friday 4th April at 2-3pm. This chat will be with Murray Bailey, our UK Director of Risk.
Murray was previously Credit Risk Director for GE Capital, Citibank and HFC Bank with over 20 years experience of consumer credit risk management.
If you can’t make the time but have a question you’d like answered, please leave him a question on our discussion board here.
Nearer the time I’ll do an update post with the location of the chat.
Look forward to seeing you there.
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The Zopa site will be down for around 2 hours on Monday 17th March, from 4-6pm.
We’re upgrading our current hardware to something new and shiny and it might (hopefully) be a little quicker when we come back online.
Here’s to system migrations!
Thanks for your patience while the work is done.
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The papers have been full of one story today. The Budget? No. The chef that will only eat biscuits!
We tried to think of something to blog about from the budget but the biscuit eating chef was much more interesting.. Well, we thought so.
Today, the metro had the story of Andrew Foster who has a fear of food and only eats biscuits. The 27-year-old regularly munches his favourite biscuit, Tunnock’s Caramel Wafers.
He said: “I used to get through two packets of biscuits a day. When I was 18 months old, I stopped eating. Experts advised my mum to starve me as I’d eventually eat, but the only thing I’d want was biscuits.”
Talking about his job as a chef. “I’d think, “That smells delicious”, but the thought of tasting it would make me feel sick.”
We’ve all been wondering, what made him become a chef?
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As you’ve probably guessed by now… we’re all in the celebrating mood. It’s our 3rd birthday (have we mentioned that enough yet?), it’s Friday and… well I think that’s reason enough for some merriment!
So, I’ve been accosting people in the office, asking them what 3 things they’ll be doing to celebrate our birthday. I’ve picked out a few to share and after you’ve read our random offerings, we’d love to hear what you’ll be doing; you can post below.
Jesper -
Blowing up some balloons
Eating some cake
Eating some more cake
Pedro -
Playing keepy uppy with the balloons
Popping a balloon behind some unlucky victim
Enjoying a birthday drink
Tristan -
Putting on my birthday suit
Eating birthday cake
Taking a moment to appreciate where I work and what we’ve achieved
Tanya -
On the internet to find a nearby bakery
Buying a birthday cake for the office
And raising a glass to all our fantastic users who made something very special happen
Giles -
Trying hard to get us in the media
Taking a quiet moment to reflect on the journey so far, and think of Richard
Buying everyone a drink!
Sarah -
Wearing my party shoes
Doing a cartwheel
Eating cake
Kelley -
Testing the latest release so we can upgrade with some fresh fixes on such a special day
Polishing my best singing voice for the birthday song
Toasting Zopa with the finest of real ales
Aidan -
Updating the Zopa site to make it even better
Wondering where this cake is?
Reminding Giles about those free drinks…
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It’s not just us celebrating our birthday today, here’s a few of our members that are also celebrating being a year older(!) today.
acampbell
andrewguppy
Area13
bandrew
briarcal
bumplump
ctd2005
Delltronic
dusidog
gscas64
importer
kingsgate
liambennett
mzscorpion
PeterGA
pjnfc
scampion
soopersoo
theloaner
wadds
wally2006
zaphodb
Personal favourite ID has to be bumplump! Happy birthday to you all.
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What do you need at a third birthday party?
First thing we think of is balloons! what do you need if you don’t have a giant canister of helium to blow them all up? You need a Jesper!
Our Jesper took a minute to help create an impressive(!) wall of balloons. He’s having a sit down now to recover…..
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