Revolut, the fintech that has long worn its remote-first credentials as a badge of difference, has confirmed that its newest recruits will no longer enjoy the same freedom.
From 2027, graduates and interns joining the company will be required to spend at least three days a week in the office, a notable shift for a business that has spent years arguing that results matter more than location.
The change applies only to those at the very start of their careers. Explaining the decision, the company said “the early stages of a career benefit from in-person collaboration and mentoring”, a line of reasoning that will sound familiar to anyone who has followed the steady retreat from fully remote working across the City. For everyone else, Revolut was at pains to stress, “our remote-first policy is unchanged”.
It is a carefully drawn distinction. Until now, graduates were free to choose whether they worked from home or came into the office, and the company’s headline-grabbing perks remain firmly in place. Chief among them is the 120-day “workation”, which lets staff work remotely from abroad, “exploring new cultures while staying productive and connected”. Chief executive Nik Storonsky, who co-founded Revolut in 2015 with Vlad Yatsenko, told staff last year that the firm cared “more about what you do than where you do it”, and insisted the flexible approach would survive as long as productivity held up.
The recalibration arrives at a moment of considerable momentum for the group. Revolut became a fully licensed UK bank earlier this year after a long wait for regulatory approval, and was valued at 75 billion dollars in November 2025, eclipsing several of Britain’s established high street lenders. Founded as an app that let people in the UK and Europe spend abroad at interbank exchange rates, it now serves more than 70 million customers and supports transfers across roughly 160 countries and regions. The company has also signalled that about 40 per cent of its 12,000-strong global workforce, spread across more than 30 countries, will be based in India by the end of this year.
For all the talk of disruption, the policy itself looks rather conventional. Hybrid working is now firmly the British norm: the Office for National Statistics reported in June 2025 that around 28 per cent of workers split their week between home and the office, with the figure rising to nearly half in information and communications businesses. The debate over whether younger staff in particular should be in the room has been running for some time, with voices ranging from JP Morgan’s leadership to Lord Sugar urging young people to get their “bums back into the office”.
Employment lawyers see little to quarrel with. Jo Mackie, employment law partner at national firm Michelmores, said Revolut was “falling into line with most other major employers in making hybrid working the norm, when practical”, adding that “working alongside colleagues is particularly important for junior staff to learn and be mentored”. The sentiment is echoed across the sector, where HR specialists have noted a growing consensus that early-career development is hard to replicate over video calls.
The wider message for Revolut watchers is one of maturation. A company built on doing things differently is, in this corner at least, beginning to look a little more like the institutions it set out to challenge.
