Fintech Revolut appoints team to adjust culture

The UK’s most valuable fintech company, Revolut, has appointed a team to tackle an “aggressive corporate culture and secure a UK banking licence”. This is according to an article published in the Guardian.

The move comes after scrutiny into the working culture at the fast-growing financial services firm, a high turnover and criticism from former members of staff of a high-stress working environment.

According to an article in Wired from 2019, former Revolut employees had complained the company’s rapid growth was coming at a high human cost – including unpaid work and unachievable targets.

Revolut has grown exponentially since 2015, when it launched as a prepaid card offering free currency exchange to customers. Today it has over 25 million customers and currently employs 6,000 staff across 37 countries.

The Guardian reports that the firm’s joint founder and chief executive, Nik Storonsky, has told employees to be “inclusive, approachable” and “respectful at all times”, and to use the “the best tone of voice, time and situation to provide feedback”.

Core values will continue

He outlined the new list of “values-based behaviours” during the company’s latest Town Hall Meeting and said they would would replace current phrasing on the company’s website. 

The firm has since updated its culture and value statement.

Revolut had previously warned prospective employees that the “bar is very high” and that if staff fall short of “perfection” they will be assessed “accurately, not kindly”, even though “it might hurt sometimes”.

The Guardian reports that the ”widely reported issues around Revolut’s corporate culture are understood to have been raised with Storonsky by board members who have been trying to convince the Financial Conduct Authority to approve the company’s UK banking licence application since early 2021”.

The company denies its planned cultural “shift” is designed to appease the UK regulator. 

A Revolut spokesperson told StrategicRISK the firm’s core values and culture were not inherently changing. 

“We have a high-performance culture, which we are incredibly proud of, as it has gotten us to where we are today,” they said.  

“Whilst our core values will remain the same, we have come up with a set of expected actions for our employees that enhances our culture. It’s about embedding our culture into everything we do so our people know exactly what are good, value-driven actions and what aren’t. 

“It is incredibly important to us that all Revolut’s stakeholders, from our employees, to shareholders, and regulators trust that we have a culture in place that is being driven across all parts of the business.”