Fintech billionaires invade The Times Rich List 2021

Multi-billion-pound funding valuations have propelled two UK fintech entrepreneurs to ‘billionaire’ status over the past 12 months and opened their path onto The Times Rich List.

Guillaume Pousaz, CEO and founder of Checkout.com, is now ranked as the 33rd richest person in the UK in 2021 according to The Times, with a fortune of £5.54bn.

Not bad, considering the entrepreneur wasn’t even ranked on the 2020 list.

His riches were super-charged over the last year as Checkout.com sealed two funding rounds, first valuing the business at $5.5bn in June 2020 and then at $15bn in January 2021—sending his equity stake soaring.

Pousaz is joined on the list by Revolut CEO and founder Nikolay Storonsky, who’s seen a similar explosion in fortune over the past year, pushing him to become the 165th richest person in the UK, with a fortune of £1bn.

Storonsky was ranked 361st on the list in 2020, but The Times calculated a £637m jump in his wealth after Revolut’s Series D funding round valued the business at $5.5bn.

Given Revolut is heavily tipped to be working on a further funding round, which could double or triple its valuation, Storonsky might give Pousaz a run for his money in next year’s list.

A few names are notably absent from the list, including Monzo’sTom Blomfield and PensionBee’sRomi Savova.

Savova has a self-made fortune of £132m following PensionBee’s IPO, but The Times said this was not yet enough to join the top 250 list it publishes.

Blomfield last year had a fortune of £140m according to The Times based on his stake in Monzo, then valued at £2bn. Given the digital bank then had to cut its valuation down to £1.25bn, Blomfield will likely have to wait a bit longer to join the list.

Overall the UK has 171 billionaires according to the 2021 list, with 22 new additions over the past year, including Pousaz and Storonsky, the biggest jump in the ranking’s history.