N26 vs. Revolut: what can Osterus tell you about their business strategy?

N26 and Revolut are both competing to be the biggest challenger bank in the world. One has a strategy focussed on building a smooth product, the other is looking more into analytics and data. It’s a race against time to be the favourite in everyone’s eyes but both companies have adopted different strategies to win over the “hearts and minds” of their members. This becomes clear when looking at the CV’s of their employees.

Firstly, let’s take a look at N26. Immediately it becomes clear that N26 has built their customer service function in-house. There are over 160 recorded customer service agents working at N26 to ensure a smooth experience for its users. Moving down the list we see a high number of product managers, software engineers, and project managers. We can see this not only in the job titles but also in the background of the employees.

When looking at the background of these employees, we can see that N26 is focussed on creating the best product and customer experience. N26 prefers to hire employees who have had experience in online service platforms. The digital-first nature of work in online service will translate well to creating a digital bank. Moreover, experience in online platforms may give more of an insight into creating viral strategies and understanding how to create the best user experience.

Comparatively, Revolut prefers employees with a banking background or background in data analytics. This may be the more traditional route to go down when creating a digital-only bank. Revolut prefers the experience of traditional bankers over online service specialists. From the CVs of employees, we can see Revolut has hired bankers from most major banks such as HSBC, Citi, Deutsche Bank, and Credit Suisse. This shows a clear strategy to bring traditional banking into the modern era by using the experience of traditional bankers.

Our analysis shows 67 data scientists at Revolut. That makes them the second-largest cluster of employees after software engineers. Moving down we see a high number of analysts and operations managers. What this shows is that Revolut places enormous importance on data and analytics. Based on this analysis we can also assume that Revolut outsources its customer service.

N26 is focussed on being the best online service provider for banking, whereas Revolut has a strategy based around leveraging traditional banking experience and customer data to grow their product. As to which strategy is better… time will tell! Given, that I am a N26 customer and a happy one, I am very excited about N26’s developments. (I hope, I get a free black card upgrade for this :-P)

For more information or data please contact me directly or someone in the Osterus Team.