AltFi Insights: Here’s which digital bank is hiring the fastest and why

Which European digital bank has over 1,000 staff and is growing by 50% every six months?

AltFi Insights are articles where we analyse, unpack or exclusively reveal something new happening in peer-to-peer finance, fintech or crypto.

With all the media attention around Europe’s digital banking apps, it can be hard to see through the noise and understand which are actually growing quickly.

Luckily job hiring is largely done in public and analysis of LinkedIn pages gives us some insight as to what’s really happening behind the scenes.

For example, while Revolut’s 2-year headcount growth is an astronomical 485% as it soared from 129 staff (just slightly ahead of Monzo’s 119 at the time), to over 755 staff today, in recent months its hiring has slowed dramatically.

Over the last six months, Revolut’s headcount has grown just 30%, in comparison to Monzo’s 48% growth or N26 which saw its team grow 54% to a mammoth 1,030 staff.

Indeed N26 appears not to be even thinking about slowing down either, with 186 jobs currently advertised across its six offices in Europe and the US.

Monese, one of the smaller digital banking apps, on the other hand is clearly looking to punch above its weight, while its 2-year headcount sits at the rear of the pack growing just 191%, in the last six months it’s overtaken Revolut and Starling by growing its team by 42%.

The average tenure at these companies is also insightful. Of the digital banks Starling is leading the way, its staff stay put for 1.3 years on average—ahead of Monzo’s 1.1 years and Revolut’s 1 year.

It’s fair to assume that N26’s 0.9 year average tenure is being dragged down by its hiring binge over the last six months.

Looking ahead, Monzo and Starling both have roughly the same amount of jobs advertised, indicating that they could be expecting growth to follow a similar trajectory.

Revolut currently has 149 jobs advertised, on top of its 755 existing headcount, indicating that it will likely become a 1,000-person company in 2019.

N26 is by far the most interesting. In the middle of 2018 its hiring was super-charged, around the time that Tencent led a $160m funding round.

Now having raised a further $300m at the start of 2019 and entering vast new markets like the UK and US, N26 is clearly hiring in order to rapidly scale the business globally.

AltFi Insights are articles where we analyse, unpack or exclusively reveal something new happening in peer-to-peer finance, fintech or crypto.

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