Head of Compliance in City of London

Hi, we’re Griffin! We’re the bank for companies who want to build and launch financial products.

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 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 is 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 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’s vision is of risk and compliance teams that are an integral part of the business - somewhere our colleagues go to for expert and pragmatic advice. These functions are fundamental to the success of our business and we aim to be thought leaders in the space.

We’re early on our journey of building this function to meet our aspirations. Success in this role means taking a key role in that build process, while having complete ownership of all matters relating to compliance at Griffin. You’ll develop close working relationships with the risk team and the business’ other functions, particularly Operations, Product and Commercial.

We’d love to hear from you if you have most of the following:

• A deep knowledge of all major aspects of regulation that affect us. Knowledge in safeguarding requirements, DISP, PSD and B/COBS is essential.
• Experience in most of the following regulatory areas: conflicts of interest, consumer duty, conduct, payments, cards, complaints handling, financial promotions, SM&CR, product governance and remuneration.
• Experience of working for or closely with a regulatory body.
• Experience working for, or with, a bank in the UK.
• Comfort with solo execution - we’re a small team so you’ll need to be happy rolling up your sleeves.
• Comfort with managing people.
• A love for writing - we have a lot of documents to draft and we place a high degree of importance on clarity and readability.
• Comfort picking up new software tools for document drafting, collaboration and communication.

What will you be doing here?

As the Head of Compliance at Griffin, you will:

• Oversee the non-financial risks assignment to them in the risk management framework.
• Support the business to develop effective internal controls, to manage compliance risks, and to embed a culture which places appropriate emphasis on compliance with regulations.
• Provide proportionate and independent advice to the first line as needed.
• Develop and maintain the compliance framework, including all compliance second line policies, procedures and processes.
• Perform horizon scanning regularly and report them to the governance committees and risk owners, making sure we comply with new regulation.
• Oversee the embedding of Consumer Duty regulations to make sure we continue to deliver good customer outcomes.
• Maintain a proactive, constructive, open dialogue with all relevant regulatory bodies.
• Work with our internal auditors and the remaining second line in a transparent and collaborative manner.
• Work with our product team so that all compliance considerations for new and existing products and services are identified and appropriately managed.
• Prepare MI packs to governance bodies, improving those as needed.
• Keep the RCSA for their area up to date.
• Provide subject matter expertise to the assurance team as needed.
• Deputise for the CRO as needed.

You’ll report to the Chief Risk Officer. As this role is caught by the Certification Regime, the role holder must adhere to the FCA’s Fitness and Propriety Requirements.

What can we offer you?

• 25 days off a year + winter break (we close in between Christmas and New Year) + bank holidays.
• Remote-first flexibility - work from anywhere in the UK.
• Support with home office setup.
• Share options - so you own a piece of what we’re building.
• 1:1 coaching and therapy through Oliva.
• Auto-enrolment into company pension scheme with Penfold.
• Enhanced parental leave with up to 6 months at full pay.
• Private medical insurance and life insurance.

As a bank, we’re committed to maintaining the highest standards of security. This means that the successful candidate will need to complete background screening, and our offer will be conditional upon satisfactory review of these checks.

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 what happens next.

We’re remote-first. We have a small London office in Moorgate, but we are comfortable hiring people to work from anywhere in the UK.

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.