‘Principle driven’ approach is slowing down regulators, Revolut boss says
The boss of fintech giant Revolut said UK regulators were bogged down by a “principle driven” approach today as he called for a stricter “rules-based” model to be adopted by watchdogs.
Speaking at the CityUK summit today, Nikolay Storonsky said the firm had chosen to set up shop in the UK in 2015 due to “innovative regulatory regime”, but friction between compliance, audit teams and regulators risked hampering processes.
“I would look into making regulation less principle driven and more rules driven,” Storonsky said.
He added that a principle-based regulatory system threw up “grey zones” and “a lot of friction and that really slows down everything”.
Singapore’s “rules based” system offered a potential model for regulation, Storonsky said, which “allows you as a business to move faster.”
His comments come as London-headquartered Revolut waits for the FCA’s go ahead on a full banking licence in the UK, with the process taking longer than previously expected, Storonsky told City A.M. earlier this month.
“We applied for 48 licences across the globe and we received 44, and three of the licences that we haven’t received are actually in the UK,” he said.
Revolut, which has snapped up 18m customers globally since 2015 and fetched a valuation of $33bn in its latest funding round, is also likely to now push back any shift onto the public markets, Storonsky indicated today, as soaring inflation batters public tech stocks.
“Not in the next two years, I would say, given the state of the markets,” he said. “In the next two to three years we’ll see a large correction. This is the end of a large cycle.”