About Griffin
Hi, we’re Griffin! We’re the bank for companies who want to build and launch financial products.
Our context
We're rapidly heading towards a future where most of us access financial services through technology companies rather than high street banks. All sorts of companies are now embedding financial products into their apps and user journeys so that their customers can seamlessly make payments, manage expenses, take out loans, save, invest, and do more.
The problem is that companies are still dependent on legacy banking infrastructure if they want to offer regulated financial products. They need to either partner directly with an (slow-moving, risk-averse) incumbent bank and/or stitch together middleware from various Banking as a Service (BaaS) providers. This process is slow, expensive, and complex and makes it very hard for companies to get new financial products off the ground.
At Griffin, we want to change this.
Our purpose
We want to make it easy for companies to bring finance to their customers at the point of greatest relevance. So, we built a bank.
But not just any bank! Griffin is a technology platform and a bank: fully regulated, API-first, developer-centric, and purpose-built to serve innovative fintechs and brands who want to build and embed financial products.
Our culture
Our culture is our most important asset, and one of the ways we safeguard it is by being extremely intentional about hiring the right people. We won't hire people who don’t seem like a strong fit for our core values, even if they're otherwise extremely qualified.
We also believe that smart, motivated, conscientious people thrive in high-trust, high-autonomy environments. That’s why we’re transparent by default, and we encourage open discussion and challenge across all levels of the organisation. We’re also remote-first, asynchronous, and fully flexible - because you're the expert on how and when you do your best work.
The Risk and Compliance team
We're working to build a second line that is a highly respected and integrated part of the business and somewhere our colleagues go to for expert and pragmatic advice, while remaining independent from the first line.
Our aim is no less than to be the best in class. We are not putting patches on legacy frameworks, we're laying the foundations of the future of global financial infrastructure.
Who are you?
The ideal candidate for this job will have most of the following:
Experience
- Strong knowledge of UK financial services regulatory framework, as well as industry best practice in the design and operation of systems and controls.
- 8+ years’ experience working within financial services in the UK or in a professional services firm the challenger bank space.
- Experience in an assurance role including direct experience in delivering second or third line assurance programmes.
- Experience in managing other colleagues
- Experience of presenting regulatory matters to senior colleagues, for example interactions with C-suite and leadership teams.
- Experience working for/being supervised by the UK’s financial services regulators - the FCA and/or the PRA.
- Capable of holistic oversight of systems and controls across a new bank, either in economic crime, compliance or risk. Able to get into regulatory detail and cross reference with policy and practices.
Qualities
- A research mindset: you're comfortable diving deep into source regulation, analysing it, and applying it.
- A collaborative mindset and an interest in working closely with all other parts of the business, coaching those with limited knowledge of 3LoD models and building relationships to operate as an assurance business partner.
- Comfort with solo execution - we're a small team so you'll need to be happy rolling up your sleeves.
We’re hybrid-remote, and most of your colleagues will not share an office with you on a day-to-day basis. This means you should also have:
- A high degree of comfort adopting new software tools for document drafting, collaboration and communication.
- A love of writing - we have a lot of documents to draft and we place a high degree of importance on clarity and readability (read more about how we write )
- We are a new bank so it is imperative that you are comfortable in going outside your comfort zone.
What will you be doing here?
As Assurance Senior Manager you will work with the Head of Compliance and other parts of the business. Your main tasks will be:
- Owning the design and delivery of our second line line assurance plan, working with the Economic Crime and Risk teams and Internal Audit team to deliver a collaborative combined assurance model.
- Performing, as needed, regulatory gap analysis, deep dives and independent monitoring reviews in line with the second line assurance plan, or as requested by the Head of Compliance.
- Creating workplans, scopes and templates to assist with the delivery of the second line assurance plan.
- Producing or review assurance MI and reporting.
- Preparing for and maintain documentation detailing assurance findings ready for presentation to our relevant regulatory bodies (FCA, PRA, NCA, HMT as appropriate) on all regulatory matters.
- Keeping up to date with emerging regulatory changes and summarise/provide advice to the first line about the changes that are required.
- Managing the second line assurance team.
- Assist with other second line activities, as required.
What can we offer you?
We are an early stage startup and we're working hard to expand our benefits package. We're planning to add to this list in the future.
- 25 days off a year + bank holidays
- Flexible, remote-friendly working - including supporting home office setup
- Tax-advantaged stock options under HMRC's Company Share Option Plan (CSOP)
- Auto-enrolment into company pension scheme
- Enhanced parental leave with up to 6 months at full pay
- Private medical insurance and life insurance (provided by Vitality and AIG respectively)
How do I apply?
Are we your next move? Apply via the link below, if there's a match our Talent team will reach out to schedule an initial conversation and talk you through our interview process in detail.
N.B: We have a small London office in Moorgate, and we are comfortable hiring people to work from anywhere in the UK. About half of the company is based within occasional commuting distance of London, the other half is full-time remote.
Our goal is for Griffin to proportionally represent the diversity of the working population in society. We’re working to ensure that Griffin is a supportive, empowering and inclusive environment for every member of our team — whatever your combination of race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, physical ability, nationality, neurodiversity, and religious beliefs. If you’re part of a group that is under-represented in fintech, we’d love to hear from you
Griffin Bank Ltd request that recruitment agencies do not speculatively submit CVs to any employee or associate of our company unless explicitly asked to do so by a member of our Talent team.
Any CVs sent to any member of our team on a speculative basis will not be recognised and we will not accept liability for any fee or commission should we subsequently employ a candidate who applied to us directly or was introduced by an instructed agency that may also have been submitted speculatively by an uninstructed agency.
