The CEO of FinTech start-up Revolut has called on the UK government to create specialised visas for tech professionals.
The comments were made as the London-based FinTech announces plans to double its workforce in the UK over the next few months.
“We need to apply pressure on the UK government to introduce fast track visas for technology professionals, particularly in the areas of software development and data science,” said Nik Storonsky.
“Such a move will give a much needed boost to the UK skills market and allow UK-based tech companies, such as Revolut, to create more jobs and scale our operations globally.”
“Right now, there is no doubt in my mind that London is the best place to build and grow a FinTech start-up,”
The start-up now has four million customers and is opening more than 10,000 new accounts daily. Since July 2018 it has increased its Weekly Active Users (WAU) from 400,000 to over 1.1 million.
“With all of the political uncertainty kicking off right now, lengthy immigration processes and bureaucracy will only slow down the UK FinTech industry’s growth and we risk losing out on the best talent to other EU countries such as Germany and France.”
The fast-growing FinTech is close to launching in 7 new international markets, with highly anticipated product launches this year including a commission-free trading platform, Robo-advisor and Kids app.
At the beginning of 2019 FinTech investment had reached a record $31bn.
“While our current growth rate is really impressive for a three year old company, we are targeting 50,000 new accounts in Europe each day by the end of the year, and we’ll need to double our workforce here in London if we’re to achieve this goal.
“Over the coming months, we’ll aim to gather wide scale support among the UK tech sector and actively engage in discussions with the relevant UK government departments.
“The Prime Minister has previously stated on record that boosting the UK technology sector is a key focus for the government, so I’m optimistic that we can find some common ground here.”