Bank of England reportedly plans to reject Revolut’s banking licence bid

Could Revolut’s saga to win a UK bank licence be coming to an end?

The Bank of England is planning to reject Revolut’s application for a British bank licence, according to a report from The Telegraph.

Revolut first applied for a UK licence back in 2021, and was granted a licence in the European Union in the same year.

Currently, the fintech is regulated as an e-money institution in the UK, and would require a licence to offer regulator-protected deposits and lending products, such as mortgages.

According to The Telegraph, since the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) informed the government in March that it intended to issue a statutory warning notice to Revolut within weeks, a notice has not been served and “urgent talks” are taking place.

The PRA had said the company’s application would be turned down because of concerns over its balance sheet, after a qualified audit opinion of its overdue accounts revealed the BDO could not verify £477m in revenue.

The journey to try to secure a banking licence has been a long one for Britain’s most valuable tech start-up.

It has nearly 30m customers worldwide, revealed it was turning a profit in its results and was labelled by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt as a “shining example from our world-beating fintech sector”.

Yet despite co-founder and CEO Nik Storonsky declaring back in September last year that the company was “almost there” on its licence, and then again in March saying it was coming “any day now”, it seems to still be faltering.

Revolut has also lost a number of key senior executives over the past 12 months.

Most recently, the company’s chief financial officer Mikko Salovaara and James Radford, the head of its UK business, both resigned within a matter of weeks.

Blaming the recent banking turmoil on the delays to its licence, Storonsky said recently the cause was “really not us”.

He has since said Revolut will not consider listing in London and criticised the UK’s “extreme bureaucracy”.

Revolut declined to comment on ongoing licence applications.