Europe’s most valuable fintech firm Revolut, which is based in the UK, has been using a tracking tool to monitor staff behaviour, which influences decisions on bonus payouts.
According to the firm’s latest annual report, points are granted or docked using its Karma system, which was introduced to oversee how well employees met risk and compliance rules.
The annual report said the company had worked towards a “healthy risk and compliance culture” because of its use of a points-based system that helped determine payouts for its workforce.
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Pierre Decote, group chief risk and compliance officer, wrote in the report: “Our industry-leading proprietary scheme, Karma, is essential for measuring and incentivising good risk and compliance outcomes, and its coverage was expanded in 2024 to address our organisation’s growing complexity.”
The report stated: “With more than 30 risk and compliance processes covered, Karma serves both as a feedback loop that rewards and corrects behaviours, as well as a comprehensive risk and compliance culture oversight engine, which allows us to prioritise key developments in this space.”
It added: “Clear roles, responsibilities and oversight arrangements are defined both operationally and organisationally, as well as mechanisms to incentivise good business practices such as Karma.”
A Revolut spokesperson told The Guardian: “Our proprietary Karma system is focused on driving positive risk and compliance actions at Revolut. This industry-leading scheme, started in 2020, effectively measures and incentivises good risk practice.”
They added that Karma had proved the success of linking such tools to remuneration, “ultimately building a strong culture of risk management and compliance across the business”.
Revolut was founded in July 2015 by British-Russian businessman Nikolay Storonsky and British-Ukrainian software engineer Vlad Yatsenko and attracted praise from government figures such as former chancellor Jeremy Hunt.
In its early years, the bank was accused of fostering a toxic work culture. In March 2019, tech magazine Wired published an article on Revolut, citing evidence of unpaid work, high staff turnover and employees feeling the need to work weekends to meet performance indicators. The following year Wired published a further account detailing how staff at the firm had during the Covid pandemic been coerced into accepting terminations, although the employer had no lawful means of firing them.
Storonsky admitted there had been cultural issues, writing in a blog 2019 that the company had made errors. To address these, he wrote: “We’ve introduced new 360 performance reviews to make them more fair and transparent. We’ve completely overhauled our onboarding and offboarding process to improve employee experience.”
He added: “Our internal working culture has been evolving as fast as our business, and we have come a long way from where we were before. When I look back at some of our past mistakes, I’m certainly not proud of them, but I am proud of what we have learned along the way, and the direction that we’re now heading in.”
Since then, accusations over a toxic work environment have continued to surface, however, with former employees airing grievances on forums such as Glassdoor.
The company has grown to employ more than 10,000 staff. It did not gain a UK banking licence until July 2024, having applied in 2021, because of the financial authorities’ concerns over the bank’s measures to prevent fraud and money laundering and compliance with EU regulations.
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