By offering unsecured personal loans, Revolut enters a lucrative consumer lending market dominated by the United Kingdom’s largest banks
The Bank of England has ordered a review of Revolut’s product approval processes, examining the fintech’s internal controls as it expands into personal loans following its acquisition of a UK banking licence, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.
The scrutiny comes as the fintech giant begins offering unsecured personal loans in Britain, taking Europe’s most valuable startup into a lucrative consumer lending market dominated by the country’s largest banks.
Revolut’s UK chief executive, Francesca Carlesi, during the launch event on Monday, told Reuters that the company was moving beyond its core payments and subscription products to compete more directly with lenders including NatWest, Lloyds, Barclays, Santander’s UK business and HSBC.
“We want to transition from being a very successful everyday spending app and disrupting the market to becoming effectively the primary bank of choice for everybody in the UK,” Carlesi said.
The company also plans to launch a credit card product in the near future as it seeks to increase the income generated from each customer, a metric on which it continues to lag traditional banks.
Founded in 2015 by chief executive Nik Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko, London-based Revolut serves well over 80 million customers worldwide and has a private valuation of USD 115 billion, exceeding that of listed rivals such as Barclays and NatWest.
However, the fintech faces questions over whether it can sustain its rapid growth while generating less revenue per customer than established lenders.
The proportion of customers using Revolut as their primary bank account and receiving their salaries through the platform also remains a challenge.
Its expansion has attracted regulatory and operational scrutiny.
In 2025, Lithuania’s central bank imposed a record 3.5 million euro fine on Revolut over shortcomings in its transaction-monitoring controls.
The company was also among financial firms affected by an hours-long Google Cloud outage this month.
The Bank of England’s action comes at a time when the European country is emerging as one of Revolut’s largest markets.
As per Carlesi, the company would initially restrict lending to a selected group of customers before gradually expanding the service to its 14 million British customers over the coming months.
“The loans will range from 2,000 pounds to 25,000 pounds, with interest rates between 6.9% and 29.3%,” a Revolut spokesperson said.
Without the decades of customer spending and repayment data available to traditional banks, Revolut has supplemented its lending assessments with information purchased from external providers.
Carlesi said the company was confident in its credit analysis.
“Revolut will expand lending gradually and has not set a target for its overall UK loan book,” she added.
The company eventually intends to offload much of its lending risk through securitisation, aiming to keep its loan-to-deposit ratio close to 6%, significantly below that of other banks. It also plans to enter Britain’s competitive mortgage market in the future.
The expansion comes as UK households continue to face cost-of-living pressures, a soft labour market and rising inflation. These conditions could weaken borrowers’ ability to repay debt, adding another challenge as Revolut expands into consumer lending.
