http://blog.zopa.com Zopa blog - updates, team, news, life and more. Fri, 16 May 2008 08:55:42 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en 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. http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/05/16/we-won-the-webby/ 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 ... http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/04/30/quick-cast-your-vote/ 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 ... http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/04/10/were-up-for-another-webby/ 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 ... http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/04/04/zopa-voted-most-threatening-non-bank-competitor/ 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! http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/04/04/transcript-for-credit-webchat/ 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 ... http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/04/04/credit-webchat-at-2-3pm-today/ 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 ... http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/03/28/time-for-some-weekend-reading/ 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 ... http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/03/19/chick-this-out/ 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 ... http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/03/17/site-maintenance-monday-17th-march-2008/ 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 ... http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/03/17/online-chat-4th-april-2008/ 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 ... http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/03/14/site-maintenance-monday-17th-march-4-6pm/ 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 ... http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/03/13/the-news-story-everyone-is-talking-about/ 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 ... http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/03/07/3-things-well-do-for-our-third-birthday/ 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. http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/03/07/happy-birthday-to-you/ 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. ... http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/03/07/balloooooons/ Zopa is three years old today! It isn't just us who's reached the grand age of 3 - today also marks the third birthday of peer-to-peer lending. We were the very first P2P company when we launched in 2005 and now, three years later there are more than 20 around ... http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/03/07/happy-birthday-to-zopa-and-welcome-japan/ We're getting a tad excited here in the office. Party poppers are on standby and silly hats are threatening to make an appearance. We'll be three years old on Friday 7th (huzzah!) If you have 3 minutes to spare (seeing as it's our 3rd birthday..) what 3 words would you use ... http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/03/05/countdown-to-our-birthday/ What a great start to the day. The sun is shining, we are all unscathed after the earthquake last night and to top it off; today Giles appears in The Independent! According to The Independent, we are one of "The Googles of tomorrow". In an article which appears in ... http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/02/27/read-all-about-it/ We saw an article today which tickled our funny bone. There appears to be a spate of malfunctioning doors hitting banks around the country. The latest sees a man being locked in his bank for over an hour and a half. This comes after a 5 year old boy ... http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/02/26/watch-out-for-those-malfunctioning-doors/ The web has revolutionised pretty much everything and continues to do so, and ever since day one (and clearly for a good few days before then) at Zopa we’ve believed that the future of money is human and involves using the web to do things better. That’s why we’re particularly ... http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/02/21/10-in-2010/ We're loving the idea of this - a new system in the Philippines that lets mobile users share their credit with each other and top each other up if they are running low. Using technology to enable human beings connect with each other and exchange valuable things? Hmmm . . ... http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/02/11/share-a-load/ There has been a wide array of intriguing stories coming out of the Credit Crisis and I thought I’d share one which has more than a little irony… Our biggest competitor - the banking industry - has just delivered the biggest boost to the Zopa business to date. ... http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/02/05/no-january-blues-at-zopa/ We'll be performing site maintenance tomorrow morning from 6am for around 2 hours. The site will be unavailable while the IT team are busy tinkering. Thank you for your patience and understanding while the work takes place. http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/01/31/site-maintenance-tomorrow-morning-1st-february-2008/ We've experienced a problem with the handover from our old banking system to our new one, which has caused a problem with some of the borrower repayments currently processing this month. Unfortunately, due to teething problems with the software and good old human error, repayments which are usually requested in pence, ... http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/01/29/pence-not-pounds/ We have always claimed that a loan from Zopa represents great value for anybody in search of an unsecured personal loan. This week, we were doing some new analysis on our customers (we always want to understand how we can better meet our users' needs). And we discovered some amazing proof. ... http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/01/29/267/ In a change to the planned maintenance of the 23rd, we'll now be performing site maintenance on January 24th from 4am for around 5 hours. During this time, the site will be unavailable. Thank you for your patience and understanding while the work takes place and we apologise for the ... http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/01/23/site-maintenance-tomorrow-morning/ So, 2008 kicked off rather relentlessly didn't it? After launching in Italy just under a week ago, in the US at the end of last year and Listings in the UK, we've been non stop here in the UK planning all sorts of exciting things for the rest of the ... http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2008/01/22/making-zopa-even-better-in-2008/ We're growing and need more hands on deck, if you're interested in working for Zopa, check out the Jobs at Zopa page. http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2007/12/20/jobs-get-your-fresh-jobs-here/ We'll be taking the site offline to give the database a spring clean from 10.30pm tonight. We're expecting that the work will take 3 hours. That is all. http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2007/12/11/site-down/ It's not enough that we were the first peer-to-peer lending site on the planet, thanks to Richard, Dave, James, Giles, and Tim, back in March 2005. And it's not enough that we've been the safest. This week, we become the most global. And the experience we ... http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2007/12/05/money-it-is-a-changin/