Revolut expects to grow its global headcount by around 40 per cent in 2024 as the fintech pushes for rapid expansion and bucks a recent trend of mass layoffs among major financial and tech firms.
The London-based startup reached 10,000 employees worldwide earlier this month, adding some 2,000 staff since the start of 2024. It plans to boost this number to 11,500 by the end of the year.
Revolut said the majority of the new roles would be created in its sales, customer support and financial crime divisions. It is currently advertising more than 70 roles in the UK.
“Revolut continues to grow from strength to strength, and to support that growth it is essential that we recruit the best talent from across the industry,” said Francesca Carlesi, chief executive of Revolut UK.
“We are delighted to be expanding across our global markets, including the UK, with hundreds of new roles across a range of specialities, all at a time when others are cutting back.”
The news comes as many other financial firms and tech companies slash job numbers and implement hiring freezes, reversing much of the heavy hiring done immediately after Covid-19 lockdowns.
Global banks cut more than 60,000 roles last year, according to the Financial Times, while the Layoffs.fyi tracker shows 259 tech firms have axed nearly 75,000 roles since the start of 2024. Executives have cited economic pressures, defending profit margins and streamlining business models as major factors.
Revolut has recently felt the weight of higher staffing costs on its bottom line. Its most recent accounts revealed the firm swung to a £25m loss in 2022 after a jump in administrative expenses, including staff wages from a doubling of its global headcount to 6,000 during the year.
Meanwhile, the firm is trying to diversify its revenue streams to achieve more sustainable profitability. In February, it hired a TikTok executive to lead a roughly 30-strong sales team for a “media strategy” including plans to monetise customer data through advertising partnerships.
Revolut became the UK’s most valuable fintech firm in 2021 after landing a $33bn valuation in a funding round led by SoftBank. Its implied valuation by Schroders dropped to as low $18bn in 2022 but rose to around $26bn at the end of last year.
A major boost to Revolut’s profitability would come from securing a UK banking licence from City regulators, allowing it to offer products like mortgages and credit cards to its more than eight million British customers.
The process typically takes one year, but Revolut has been waiting for more than three amid audit issues, criticism of its corporate culture and the delayed filing of its accounts.
A remote-first business, more than a third of Revolut’s UK workforce is based outside of London. The firm, which received more than one million job applications globally last year, said that by hiring across the country and giving employees more flexibility, it could access a wider pool of talent.