Revolut has made more than 50 redundancies in its customer care teams in Portugal and Poland.

Wired reported that employees were told to either quit or be fired by the digital challenger bank. These were not a part of the 62 redundancies that Financial News reported a month ago.

A spokesperson for the company explained: “As in many companies, COVID-19 necessitated cost cutting across our business and, in the last resort, we made 62 redundancies globally, representing less than three per cent of our staff.

"Revolut strives to create a positive culture with a workforce that is motivated to achieve the best they can for our customers - where employees leave the business as a result of redundancy or performance we aim for this to be as painless as possible and, in every case, we fully comply with local labour law requirements.”

At the end of February, Revolut raised $500 million in Series D funding, making it the UK’s most valuable FinTech with a valuation of $5.5 billion.

In recent months, it has been adding to its senior leadership team, in March bringing in former Goldman Sachs International co-chief executive Michael Sherwood, and experienced retail banker and former chief risk officer Ian Wilson, as non-executive directors.

Revolut employs more than 2,000 people globally.

Meanwhile, Monzo has also been forced into job cuts, with around 120 roles going initially as part of redundancy plans expected to affect around eight per cent of the digital bank’s total staff. The redundancies will affect head office and operations teams.

It previously furloughed 295 staff in the UK, and announced 165 redundancies with the closure of its Las Vegas customer support office.

Before moving to become president, then chief executive Tom Blomfield decided to forgo his salary for 12 months. Monzo is also closing in on £70 to 80 million in top up funding, although this is likely to come at around a 40 per cent reduction of its previously £2 billion valuation.

After announcing at the start of 2020 that the bank’s headcount would be growing from around 1,500 to around 2,000, the bank now could end the year with a net reduction in headcount.

“Unfortunately we haven’t been able to achieve the goal of preventing the risk of redundancy at this time," read a statement from the firm.

“The government has been clear the furlough scheme should not be abused if redundancies are planned anyway - this was based on our understanding of the impact of the crisis,” it added.

Share Story: