Revolut CEO Nikolay Storonsky said the fintech wants to set a precedent with its new elite licensing team.
A month after securing its European banking licence, Revolut has today (29 January) announced plans to build a crack global licensing team, initially focused on the UK and the US. The new team will be responsible for securing banking, trading and credit licences in new and existing markets.
With more than 4m customers, Revolut is one of a number of fintechs securing banking licences with the aim of enticing consumers away from legacy banks.
CEO on Brexit and the hunt for talent
According to CEO and co-founder Nikolay Storonsky, the company is looking for “people who have previous experience in securing either a banking or trading licence, and they should be quite technical and be comfortable working in a very fast-paced environment”.
On Brexit, Storonsky said the political upheaval is “obviously a little bit of an inconvenience for us” but added that Revolut has “never been a reactive company”. He noted the preparations the firm had already made: “That’s why we’ve now secured an EMI licence in both the UK and Europe and, now that we have a European banking licence in place, our next step is to secure a UK banking licence.”
The core team will consist of a capital, liquidity and financial modelling manager, a licence business planning manager, a licence project manager for banking, a licence project manager for trading, and a global head of licence operations. The team will be responsible for delivering the entire end-to-end licensing process – from liaising with decision-makers, partners and regulators, through to the execution of specific deliverables required to obtain each licence.
Looking at talent, Storonsky said the company was not seeing signs of reluctance from people when it came to relocating to London. He noted that the company is lobbying for a specialised visa “for high-calibre software engineers and data scientists, so that it’ll be far easier for this kind of talent to get into the country”. He added: “If the UK is to remain the tech capital of Europe, we need to make it easy and fast for the best talent to come in.”
Revolut has plans for children’s app
The scale-up also plans to launch an app aimed at improving children’s financial literacy. Through Revolut Youth, customers can add their children to an account as a secondary user.
Children can choose their own card and then use the current account and money management platform, while parents retain control over the account and monitor transactions.
Revolut aims for the app to meet the UN development standards for financial literacy. There will be a version of the app for children aged seven and over, and another aimed at teenagers around 16 years old.
Discussing the launch of the app this coming summer, the company said: “We believe that taking control over your finances is a lifetime of work, and starting to learn about financial literacy and how to manage your money is vital from a young age.”