Syed Imran Haider 
Thanks to a rise in the number of users, Revolut reported full-year pretax profits. Now, the company’s CEO said that they are optimistic about their chances of obtaining a UK banking license.
The co-founder and CEO of the British financial technology giant, Nikolay Storonsky, stated that they were confident about securing the British banking license.
The CEO
After all, the company has managed to overcome a number of hurdles in the last three years to get approval from the regulators.
Storonsky said that they hoped to get the license sooner or later. He added that regulators had not granted approval as yet, but they had not expressed any outstanding concerns either.
The chief executive said that it has taken Revolut longer to get approval for the banking license because of is huge size. Smaller companies would have gotten it faster.
He added that a number of small financial institutions that have few customers have managed to get approved for a banking license.
He said that smaller companies had been successful in obtaining a UK banking license. Storonsky stated that approval is usually granted to companies twice a year and it is mostly small institutions.
He said that since they are a large fintech firm, it is understandable that it is taking time.
The license
Revolut operates in the UK with an EMI license i.e. electronic money institution. However, it is unable to offer lending products like personal loans, credit cards and mortgages.
Once it obtains a banking license, it would be able to offer loans in the United Kingdom. The company filed its application back in 2021, but has faced lengthy delays since then.
One issue that the firm has had to face is its inconsistent share structure. It is not in compliance with the rules laid out by the Prudential Regulation Authority.
This regulatory body operates under the Bank of England and oversees the financial services industry. Revolut has different classes of shares, some of which come with preferential rights attached.
The Bank of England had demanded Revolut to convert its six classes of shares into ordinary ones to get a banking license.
The solution
Since then, Revolut entered into a deal with SoftBank, a Japanese tech investor. The deal saw it transfer its shares to a unified class.
With this move, the company was able to eliminate the preferential rights attached to the shares. Last year, the company saw its pretax profit for the full year reach $543 million.
A year earlier, it had reported a pretax loss. There was a 95% increase in group revenue, which went from $1.1 billion in 2022 to $2.2 billion last year.
The chief financial officer of Revolut, Victor Stinga, said that a record increase in the number of users had resulted in growth for the company.
In 2023, Revolut saw its customer count go up by 12 million. Its key business operations also recorded strong performance, which include subscriptions, wealth, and foreign exchange and card fees.
Stinga said that the previous year had proven to be a breakout year for the company in terms of profitability and growth.
