Revolut, the UK’s most valuable fintech company, claims it is at the “finish line” of winning a UK banking licence, as much-delayed accounts revealed its first annual profit.
The company has been praised as a high-growth success story by leading UK politicians including the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, but it has also been criticised for the late filing of accounts, as well as EU regulatory breaches and fines.
The company said IT glitches had delayed its accounts and that this had been fixed going forward.
However, the external number crunchers BDO said in the delayed 2021 annual report that its staff were unable to get a complete picture of some of the company’s revenue and as a result it, or other financial balances, could be “materially misstated”.
These issues meant the auditor was limited in its ability to detect “irregularities, including fraud”, it said.
It was able to confirm customers’ cash balances held with third parties and did not raise any warnings about Revolut’s future as a going concern.
Allegations of an aggressive work environment, which Revolut has denied, have also come under scrutiny as the company pushes toward a prized UK banking licence.
The fintech, which has ambitions to be the “Amazon of banking” and which cannot yet hold deposits or make loans to customers, made a profit of £26.3m in the year to December 2021. The company’s revenues rose from £220m in 2020 to £636m in 2021.
Mikko Salovaara, its chief financial officer, told the Guardian in an interview that the company was on the brink of getting a banking licence from City regulators: “I think we’re at the very last stages. Really at the finish line.”
Salovaara said the UK licence was a step towards achieving Revolut’s aim of becoming a “truly global bank”. It would allow the company to offer “an increasing set of services to our customers, particularly credit,” he added.
Revolut did not put a deadline on when it expected to receive a UK banking licence in the 2021 report, instead saying it was “in the advanced stages of its application” to British regulators.
It added that revenues exceeded £830m ($1bn) in the year to December 2022.
Nik Storonsky, its chief executive, said: “We have achieved our first full year of profit and shown that we can accelerate customer growth, at scale, and grow revenue across all of our product lines.
“In 2021, we were granted a full banking licence from the European Central Bank and welcomed millions of new customers.”
Revolut’s accounts for the year ending December 2021 were due to be published on the British business register, Companies House, in September last year. An extension up to December was then also missed by the fintech.
The delay is understood to have come after BDO, which has been Revolut’s auditor since 2018, was chastised by the accountancy regulator for the “unacceptable” quality of a string of company audits – which, according to the Financial Times, included Revolut.
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The FT report claimed Revolut was the unnamed company behind accounts that the Financial Reporting Council said suffered from an “inadequate” approach to the way revenue was recognised.
This process appears to be referenced in Revolut’s 2021 annual report. It states that the FRC’s audit quality review team examined BDO’s assessment of Revolut’s December 2020 financial statements and that “matters” were raised. An attempt to address these issues was “incorporated into the 2021 audit plan” and there were “changes made to the audit strategy and approach”.
Salovaara said the lengthy delays in publishing critical financial information were caused by having IT systems for accounting that were not fit for the company’s larger scale in 2021.
“It [Revolut’s growth] outgrew the initial implementation of IT systems around and specifically for accounting. We recognised that and we remediated it.
“It’s a one-off. We don’t expect further delays on an ongoing basis in our accounts.”
As a result, Revolut’s senior managers who oversee its financial reporting concluded “the [2021] audit was effective and that none of the matters raised brought into question the integrity of the prior year financial statements”.
Revolut declined to address specific questions from the Guardian on the turnover of its compliance employees last month. These staff ensure businesses follow regulations, including those on sanctions and anti-money laundering.
However, in the 2021 report published on Wednesday it said: “Last year we reported a significant expansion and upskilling of our risk and compliance function in terms of people, processes, tools and infrastructure, which was commensurate with Revolut’s customer and commercial development.”
It added that it had increased its headcount in this area from 147 to 206.
