This yr was imagined to be one huge victory lap for Revolut, the UK’s largest fintech. The agency trumpeted its first ever year of profitability in March, having tripled its earnings year-on-year, and continues to rent at a blistering tempo, regardless of doom and gloom elsewhere within the sector.

This was additionally the yr Revolut hoped to earn its UK banking license. Since it started providing pay as you go playing cards in 2015, the agency has amassed 25 million clients and moved into companies from crypto buying and selling to worldwide cash switch. It’s now valued at $33 billion. Getting the license would let it increase additional, into insured deposits and profitable lending merchandise like mortgages and bank cards—in brief, to behave like an actual financial institution.

The newest indication, although, is that Revolut will miss out. On May 18, The Telegraph reported that the Bank of England is getting ready to reject the corporate’s license software, bringing to an sad finish a course of that has now dragged on for greater than two years.

The Bank of England, which declined to remark, has not issued a proper determination. But a denial, says Stephen Kingsley, a seasoned non-executive director and chair of a number of audit committees at monetary establishments, would hitch a “red flag” to Revolut that may injury its development prospects at house and elsewhere. “It’s quite serious,” he says.

A rejection, ought to one finally arrive, is more likely to be the consequence of an unflattering “series of own goals” scored by Revolut, says Kingsley. Against the backdrop of the pandemic and now malaise in the banking sector, the applying was sure to face clerical delays and extra scrutiny, however plenty of Revolut’s wounds have been self-inflicted, he says.

The agency attracted criticism over its latest financials, assessed by auditor BDO. When the report arrived on March 1, 5 months late, it described shortcomings within the firm’s IT practices that meant three quarters of its revenues—£476.9 million ($591.6 million)—couldn’t be verified with complete satisfaction.

Although removed from very best, neither an audit qualification nor a reporting delay is purpose in itself to disclaim a banking license software, says Kingsley. But Revolut’s response to the report could have given the regulator pause. The firm made a mistake, he claims, in instructing its legislation agency to explain away the findings in a method that “amounted to a challenge to the auditor’s report”—a transfer more likely to be interpreted by the Bank of England as a scarcity of respect for oversight. “It’s unheard of,” says Kingsley. “The trouble is that Revolut did not take [the report] seriously. It took umbrage; as if it were an insult rather than a professional observation.”

Likely including to reservations regarding the audit report, says Devin Kohli, co-head at fintech-focused enterprise capital agency Outward VC, are issues about Revolut’s organizational and capital construction.

A string of government departures for the reason that begin of the yr—together with the corporate’s CFO, group COO and head of UK banking—gained’t have helped issues, he says, and could have left the Bank of England speculating as to the reason for this turnover. “There’s a concern around why people cannot stay in senior positions for an extended period of time,” Kohli says.