ESMA Didn’t Say How Lithuania’s Cross-Border Clients Jumped 5,000x. Is It Because of Revolut?

Lithuania's cross-border retail investment client base surged from roughly 500 in 2022 to more than 2.5 million by 2024, and the available evidence points to Revolut's Lithuanian brokerage unit as the main driver. The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) does not name the firm behind the jump, but its description matches regulatory filings by Revolut Securities Europe UAB almost line by line, making it the closest documented match.

In a July 2026 follow-up to a peer review, ESMA said Lithuania was the second-largest jurisdiction in the EU/EEA by cross-border retail clients and complaints, behind Germany with over 3.5 million clients and ahead of Cyprus with more than 2 million. Lithuania accounted for 24% of all EU/EEA retail client relationships served cross-border in ESMA's 2024 dataset. Firms based in Cyprus, Lithuania, Germany and Ireland together served 86% of the total, with the five largest cross-border providers each reporting between 700,000 and 2.6 million retail clients.

A Single Firm Behind the Numbers

Lithuania had just 16 locally licensed investment firms at the end of 2025, according to the Bank of Lithuania, and ESMA states that the increase in cross-border clients is attributable to a single company. Complaints tied to Lithuania's cross-border business also rose from zero to 1,562 over the same period. According to the report, only one Lithuanian firm was serving clients across all 29 other EEA markets.

Revolut Securities Europe UAB was incorporated in Vilnius in June 2021 and received a Category B investment firm licence from the Bank of Lithuania later that year. It launched investment services in March 2023 and sits within Revolut Holdings Europe UAB, which consolidates the group's regulated European entities. Under its MiFID II licence, the firm provides execution, portfolio management, investment advice, custody and related services, and passports them across all other EEA jurisdictions.

During 2023, the company migrated more than 1.1 million EEA-based customers from its UK affiliate, Revolut Trading Limited. By the end of that year, it reported serving more than 2.5 million customers and administering over €3 billion in assets, including €2.96 billion in client securities. That figure climbed to €9.1 billion by the end of 2024, according to its most recent annual report. The chronology matches closely: the Lithuanian entity launched in March 2023 and reported more than 2.5 million customers by year-end, just before Lithuania appeared in ESMA's 2024 data with a comparable cross-border client total.

The surge partly reflects an internal customer migration within the Revolut group rather than purely new organic demand at the Lithuanian entity. ESMA's figures also measure reported cross-border client relationships, not unique individuals, since one investor may hold accounts with several firms or receive services from multiple providers. Revolut did not respond to a request for comment before publication.