The ex-Barclays guy key to making Revolut people rich
If Revolut can achieve its rumored $40Bn valuation, a lot of current and former staff are going to be very rich. If it can achieve a valuation higher than that, they will be even richer still. Those ifs, however, are big. The fintech is still yet to secure a UK banking license (not for lack of trying). Bloomberg estimates the lack of a license costs Revolut £100m ($129.5m) per year in potential lost revenue.
Revolut's hopes of remedying its UK licence situation are dependent on the activities of one man.
Click here to follow our new WhatsApp channel, and get instant news updates straight to your phone 📱
Pierre Decote, Revolut's chief risk and compliance officer, spent five years at BarclayCard before joining the app-based bank in November 2019. He was most recently Barclays' strategic analytics director. He's also held executive roles at rival digibank Tandem and student loans fintech Prodigy Finance, from which he joined Revolut.
Decote is also one of Revolut's 23 partners. The fintech said nomination to this leadership contingent is a "highly selective process" in its 2023 annual report, and that "many potential candidates" did not make the cut. In 2024 only two partners have been added. Another partner who would have played a key role in Revolut's attempts to get a banking license also left recently: group head of financial crime and fraud Aaron Elliot-Gross left for payments fintech Wise in February.
Decote said in the annual report that his compliance team grew its headcount by 29% in 2023, reaching 331 employees. He added that the team's most effective product is "Karma" a proprietary scheme that tracks employees' adherence to compliance protocols, awarding them points for doing so.
According to a 2022 confirmation statement on Companies House, Decote has 7707 shares in Revolut. At a $40bn valuation, those shares would be valued at £4m.
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: +44 7537 182250 (SMS, WhatsApp or voicemail). Telegram: @AlexMcMurray. Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com. Signal also available.
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t.)
