{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"A2Z Fintech","title":"S2E28 — Is This the Start of a Revolut-ion? Inside the Rise of Nik Storonsky's $115bn Bank","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3785,"description":"Revolut is valued at $115 billion, holds more than £50 billion of customer money, and lends out about £2 billion of it. What does a bank that refuses to lend actually do with a deposit, and what happens when the man who built it is the only part that cannot be automated?\nIn September Nik Storonsky won conditional approval from the OCC to form Revolut Bank US, sat down with the Banque de France in a black suit and a red tie, and watched two data breaches reach Revolut customers inside a fortnight. The founder who spent years being publicly rude about regulators is now dressing for them, and for the investors who will price a Revolut listing at up to $200 billion.\nAman Narain and Zubin Vandrevala trace Storonsky from Dolgoprudny and the Lehman trading floor to the Revolut of today, and ask whether he has built anything that works when he is not in the room.\nKey takeaways:\n1. Revolut's scar is Lehman, not Moscow: it lends under 5p of every deposit pound, where Nubank lends roughly 58p.\n2. Nubank, Revolut and SoFi run the same flywheel but answer one question differently: a deposit is for credit, for float, or for software.\n3. Removing credit risk bought rate risk. When rates fall the float shrinks, as Wise has already shown.\n4. Citi, HSBC and Standard Chartered retreating as Revolut advances is one spreadsheet read from opposite ends.\n5. Storonsky took judgment out of lending, hiring and investing, and kept all of it in one room: his own.\nTopics covered:\n- Dolgoprudny, the 1998 default, Phystech and the Lehman floor on 15 September 2008\n- A sub-5% loan-to-deposit ratio, the contested 40-50% return on equity, and the ECB's 4.5% capital add-on\n- Nubank, Revolut and SoFi: one flywheel, three ladders\n- Mexico's 15% savings rate, and the rate risk inside the float\n- Forty direct reports, Karma scores and five risk chiefs in seven years\n- Revolut Pay, Spanish ATMs, a £500,000 private bank, Revolut People and AIR\n- John Reed's Citi, success transfer, and the incumbents'...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/7Qyf0xWmHeg7LEUFCI-k-jpWOtyK3SxMMPFnu7Noa5M/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS84ODdh/NDVjNDFmYzZiMzFj/OWY5MzM3YjExNDAw/YTQ4NC5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}