Fintechs racing to get US banking licenses need to boost compliance and operations teams
Depending on where a fintech is based, obtaining a banking license can be an arduous process... just ask Revolut. Licenses in the UK are famously hard to obtain, requiring rigorous compliance processes, but across the pond, companies are applying for banking licenses en masse with a lot of variation between the size of their back office teams.
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Bloomberg reported late last year that at least 17 fintechs have applied for banking licenses going into 2026, and more like Amsterdam-based neobank Bunq have since joined the party. We've analyzed LinkedIn data for 13 firms applying for banking licenses, looking at how many staff members they employ in the US and what portion of those have 'risk', 'compliance' or 'operations in their job title.
The data is not fully representative of the exact size of these teams (some compliance professionals may not have the word compliance in their job title), but it suggests that some fintechs have kept hiring to a minimum. The firms below all either declined or did not respond to a request for comment.
The most egregious example is Nubank, a publicly traded Brazilian neobank with a market cap of $85bn. It has over 10k employees according to LinkedIn, but just six risk, compliance and operations staff members in the US. Most compliance hires have joined over the past year, joining from the likes of Vanguard, Stripe and JPMorgan. LinkedIn suggests that Nubank also has the smallest number of risk, compliance and ops staff relative to its total US headcount. UK-based payments fintech Wise has a sizeable operations team in the US but LinkedIn suggests it has just 20 risk and compliance staff, despite having over 1,000 employees in the country.
The fintech with the largest compliance team relative to its size isn't really a fintech at all: Fidelity's digital assets team has 46 risk, compliance and operations employees, ~15% of its US headcount.
Payments firm Stripe has a sizeable US compliance team, but the banking license application pertains to stablecoin platform Bridge, which was bought for $1bn last year. Bridge itself doesn't appear to have any compliance staff based in the US, and only has one operations manager. It's currently hiring a product counsel, reporting to Bridge's chief legal officer, on a salary of up to $345k in New York, San Francisco or Seattle.
Bizarrely, one fintech not seen above that has conditional approval on a banking license has yet to properly launch. Erebor Bank, led by defence industry executives Palmer Luckey and Joe Lonsdale, received conditional approval in October, four months after filing for its licence, despite making no public hires.
These fintechs are just the start. Phil Goldfeder, CEO of the American Fintech Council, told Bloomberg that 2025 was just "testing the waters" and that this year is when the real work begins. In anticipation of this, some of these fintechs are hiring. Crypto firm BitGo, which has one of smallest risk, compliance and ops teams, is currently hiring a US-based head of risk management based in either New York, California, or South Dakota to "develop an enterprise-wide risk managment framework." Nubank, meanwhile, is hiring a non-financial risk specialist who will be "adapting the global risk management framework to the international expansion projects"
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