Revolut CEO: We need specialised tech Visas if London is to remain the fintech powerhouse

The CEO of Revolut has today called on the UK Government to create specialised visas for technology professionals as the London-based fintech announces plans to double its workforce in the UK over the next few months.

“When I settled in London thirteen years ago, I found a community that didn’t care where you came from. They were only interested in who you were and what you had to offer. It was at this point that I knew London would be the city that I would call home, and the city where I would go on start my own business.

“Right now, there is no doubt in my mind that London is the best place to build and grow a fintech startup. However, there is a serious lack of homegrown technical talent here, which is why around seventy percent of our software engineers and data scientists are recruited from abroad.

“With all of the political uncertainty kicking off right now, lengthy immigration processes and bureaucracy will only slow down the UK fintech industry’s growth and we risk losing out on the best talent to other EU countries such as Germany and France.

“In my mind, we need to apply pressure on the UK Government to introduce fast track visas for technology professionals, particularly in the areas of software development and data science. Such a move will give a much needed boost to the UK skills market and allow UK-based tech companies, such as Revolut, to create more jobs and scale our operations globally.”

Revolut has also opened up with some recent data on its operations. As of this week, Revolut now has four million customers and is opening more than 10,000 new accounts daily. Since July 2018, Revolut has boosted its Weekly Active Users (WAU) from 400,000 to over 1.1 million, while Monthly Active Users (MAU) have increased from 900,000 to 1.9 million in the same timeframe. They are also processing over $7 billion each month in transaction volumes, up from $4 billion per month in July 2018.

The fast-growing fintech is close to launching in 7 new international markets, with highly anticipated product launches this year including a commission-free trading platform, Robo-advisor and Kids app.

“While our current growth rate is really impressive for a three year old company, we are targeting 50,000 new accounts in Europe each day by the end of the year, and we’ll need to double our workforce here in London if we’re to achieve this goal.

“For years now, we’ve been asking ourselves why the UK has not been producing as many global tech companies as the United States. In my opinion, it’ll be UK-based fintech companies who go on to achieve this status, but we’ll need fast and easy access to talent to do so.

“Over the coming months, we’ll aim to gather wide scale support among the UK tech sector and actively engage in discussions with the relevant UK Government departments. The Prime Minister has previously stated on record that boosting the UK technology sector is a key focus for the government, so I’m optimistic that we can find some common ground here.”