Bank of England Probes Revolut's Breakneck Product Machine
By Daniel Rao For a decade, Revolut's superpower was speed. Small teams, given a target and left alone, shipped product after product — currency exchange, crypto trading, savings, subscriptions, share dealing — faster than any traditional bank could hold a committee meeting about them. It built Europe's most valuable startup. Now that same speed is the subject of a formal regulatory investigation, and the timing is, by any measure, exquisite. The Bank of England ordered a review of Revolut's product-approval process in the very month it finally handed the company its full UK banking licence — and then, this week, Revolut launched its first loans. According to the Financial Times, reporting on Tuesday 27 October, the Bank of England's Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) issued a section 166 order against Revolut earlier this year, around the time the company received its long-awaited full UK banking licence in March. The order requires the company to appoint expert ...