Neobank Bunq Aims to Expand Headcount by 72%

Dutch neobank Bunq is reportedly launching a hiring spree as it aims to expand.

The company’s chief executive told CNBC in a report posted Thursday (Sept. 13) that Bunq plans to expand its staffing levels by 72% this year, from 427 employees to 735,  as it prepares to move beyond its European Union roots to the U.K. and U.S.

“Bunq focusses on digital nomads who tend to roam the world,” Bunq CEO and Co-founder Ali Niknam told the news outlet.

These are people who, as PYMNTS wrote in April, “have embraced a lifestyle that combines work with travel, leveraging technology to work remotely from anywhere in the world.”

“We’d love to be able to service our users wherever they go — given the regulatory environment we’re in, this results in us having to have a lot of extra people to make this happen,” Niknam said in the CNBC interview.

According to that report, Bunq is applying for banking licenses in both the U.S. and U.K, and is awaiting a decision from British financial regulators on its bid to become a licensed e-money institution or EMI.

Bunq had launched in England in 2019, only to be forced to exit the country the following year because Brexit, as the legal changes associated with that shift meant that European financial institutions couldn’t use their own authorizations to conduct business in the U.K.

The report notes that Bunq’s hiring efforts come as other companies in the FinTech space are cutting their workforces, with Klarna saying recently it had eliminated 1,200 jobs through attrition, and PayPal announcing layoffs earlier this year.

Bunq’s efforts come at a time when people and businesses are establishing more digitally based relationships with their financial institutions.

According to research from PYMNTS Intelligence’s most recent “How the World Does Digital” report, 42% of consumers say they engage with online banking, while 46.8% do their banking through mobile means.

The study also found that around two-thirds of consumers used an app on their phone for banking (mobile banking, 68.6%) or from their desktop with a browser (online banking, 66.6%) at least once a month.

Against this backdrop, banks, as PYMNTS wrote in July, are behaving more like neobanks, examining and re-examining their tech stacks to more fully tap into instant payments, digital account openings and embedded finance, along with other initiatives.

In a panel discussion with PYMNTS earlier this year, Galileo Head of Product Strategy Michael Haney said composable banking is “becoming an imperative to improve the operational efficiency at these legacy banks and be more responsive to client needs and industry trends.”