Revolut says CFO Mikko Salovaara plans to leave “for personal reasons”, two months after CEO James Radford left, as the company waits for a UK banking license
Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan / Financial Times :
Context & Ripple Effects
Revolut is losing its second C-suite head in as many months: CEO James Radford departed in March, and now CFO Mikko Salovaara is planning to leave after two years in the role — all while the company's UK banking licence application sits unresolved.
The timing matters because the licence process has already extracted a price from investors: regulators pushed Revolut to simplify its ownership structure, prompting top shareholder SoftBank to demand compensation. And this isn't the company's first CFO exit under pressure — Peter O'Higgins resigned in 2019 amid money-laundering allegations against the firm.
First-order effects
- Revolut must fill the CFO seat mid-licence-process, with no permanent CEO in place either — the finance lead who would normally own regulator conversations on capital and risk is departing.
Second-order effects
- Successor candidates will price in the instability: taking Revolut's finance top job means inheriting an unfinished banking licence bid and a shareholder (SoftBank) already seeking compensation over forced restructuring.
Third-order effects
- If executive churn keeps coinciding with supervisory scrutiny — the 2019 CFO exit amid compliance allegations, now this — the pattern points toward fintechs being judged on governance continuity, not just product growth, when licences are decided; the Bank of England's later concerns about whether risk controls can keep pace with Revolut's global growth fit that arc.
The trend: High-growth fintechs are discovering that regulator-led licence processes turn executive stability into a gating factor, with each senior exit extending the scrutiny.