Which fintech is leading the diversity battle?

There are two titans within fintech that are often compared, Revolut and N26. This article will take a different approach than others and compare their diversity and people statistics. Customer numbers or product offerings are important statistics to review but it’s the people that make a company — so let’s analyse their respective workforces.

My previous articles showcased how Osterus can analyse the CVs of employees to understand the knowledge base, capabilities and diversity of a company. This article will present the findings of an Osterus report.

What does this all mean?

Will this article tell you which company is easiest to get hired at? No.

What it does is point to possible preferences in hiring. What it also shows is the makeup of a company. What have we learnt from this?

• N26 focuses on product and hires employees with an online service background
• Revolut focuses on data and hires employees with a background in banking
• Revolut has a higher number of junior staff, whereas N26’s team has a higher level of seniority and experience

What does this tell you? Well that all depends on your viewpoint. Are you a potential employee? Then maybe this article will help you decide which titan would best suit you. Are you a potential investor? Then this can help show you how the team is built and what experience they have. Are you just curious? Then this can give you a little insight!

Let’s start at the beginning: where are your employees educated?

In sheer numbers of different universities, N26 beats Revolut. N26 has a higher concentration of German universities, while Revolut prefers London or Russia / eastern European based graduates. Given where the hubs of these companies are and where the founders come from, that’s hardly surprising. What is notable is that N26 has nearly double the number of universities covered in their staff than Revolut. This means in educational diversity N26 is the winner.

Revolut also prefers their employees to have a higher education. Revolut has around twice as many employees with a masters degree and three times as many employees with a doctorate than N26. When compared overall however, the average education duration of employees is very similar. N26 employees spent an average 6.46 years studying, while employees of Revolut spent 6.26 years studying on average.

What about the previous work experience of employees?

Here’s where things get interesting. Revolut has a high preference for hiring employees with a banking background, whereas N26 hires more employees that have experience working for online-service platforms. This could link to the point made earlier on education. As Revolut focuses on making hires in the area of banking and business, the prevalence of higher educational degrees may be stronger. This also indicates that Revolut is focussed on data analysis and N26 is more focused on the product.

While you may think that more degrees means more seniority, you’d be mistaken. Although Revolut has more employees with higher degrees, they actually have a smaller percentage of senior employees. Almost half of Revoluts staff are juniors (less than 3 years work experience) or interns. Revolut and N26 have similar percentages of mid level employees (6–11 years work experience) and N26 has 11% more employees with 11–16 years work experience (26 compared to 15). The statistics here are fairly even between the two companies.

For more information on this report email me at julian@osterus.com.