Lucas Germanos

I lead communications and external affairs at digital bank Zopa, the tech Unicorn founded in 2020 that raised $500 million from the early investors of Uber, Slack and Alibaba to build Britain’s best bank.

In 12 months I established Zopa as the UK’s #1 most mentioned digital bank in the press and quadrupled (4x) its earned media coverage. I also crafted Zopa’s new narrative as it transitioned from a P2P lender to a regulated bank, led a $300 million funding round by SoftBank, and mobilised a 50-strong industry coalition to combat the cost-of-living crisis at pledge2025.org.

I have 20 years of on-the-record media experience as a reporter, political aide, and most recently at Milltown Partners advising some of Silicon Valley's most iconic technology businesses. Experience includes working for Google, Facebook, Microsoft, WhatsApp, Dropbox, Plaid, and the Obama-Biden presidential campaign.

Diversity and inclusion come in different shapes and forms, including by creating a more inclusive and open financial services system and a space where queer people can bring their true selves to work.

A strong and inclusive culture is not born, it is made. It starts by improving visibility and working within a community to empower choices that support diversity.

In my two years at Zopa bank I have worked with Zopa's People team to provide a fair and inclusive environment that embraces individuality across race, ethnicity, faith, sexual orientation, class, disability, and gender.

Today Zopa is recognised for walking the talk as an inclusive, forward-thinking employer who cares deeply about creating a supportive workplace where people can be their authentic selves.

I am proud to have contributed to several initiatives aimed at promoting diversity, inclusion and equal representation, championing the introduction of Zopa’s very first DE&I charter.

Some of Zopa’s most exciting D&I initiatives include introducing D&I training across the business to build awareness of unconscious bias and a focus on combatting it; running regular surveys on engagement at company level which we analyse by gender, race, age and sexual orientation; inviting guest speakers at our all-hands meetings to talk about queer and trans rights; encouraging career mobility across the business; closing the pay gap; removing potential bias from pay decisions and promotions; launching the Zopa Leadership Academy; growing a mentoring scheme from scratch; and decoding job ads to remove gender bias and ensuring diverse candidate lists and interview panels.

As are result, I am particularly proud that:

• With a score of 4.6 / 5 on Glassdoor and 94% recommending it as a great place to work, Zopa Bank has one of the highest employee satisfaction scores in the UK financial services industry.
• Zopa offers some of the best employment benefits in the sector, including a 120 days allowance to work from abroad.
• Glassdoor recently included Zopa in its list of 25 top UK companies employees say are the best for Diversity and Inclusion.
• Zopa is the UK’s second most loved workplace in the UK, according to Newsweek.

Stay true to your values, be brave, kind and empathetic!