Fincrime Assurance Associate

The Team We Service keep things moving: runs the processes that underpin our products, supports our customers when they need us, and connects the dots across the business so nothing falls through the cracks. We spot friction early, fix it quickly, and make sure Griffin delivers on what it promises: consistently and reliably. This role sits within Griffin's first line operations, managing how well our Direct Customers (DCs) meet their financial crime obligations. You'll report directly to our Financial Crime Oversight Manager as part of a small team focused on keeping our oversight function rigorous, proportionate, and trusted.

The Opportunity With a growing number of DC assurance reviews scheduled for 2026 and beyond, we need someone who can take real ownership of the process end to end. You'll be running your own caseload: scoping reviews, conducting them, and producing findings reports that directly inform risk decisions. You'll engage with a wide range of external stakeholders and have the opportunity to shape how the function develops, including getting involved in projects such as automation.

What Success Looks Like In your first 6 months, you'll have taken ownership of your review caseload, with reports consistently produced to a high standard and recommendations tracked through to closure. The assurance schedule will be on track — no bottlenecks, no overdue reviews. By 12 months, you'll have built genuine, trusted relationships with DCs and internal stakeholders, becoming a credible point of contact that people feel comfortable raising issues with. And you'll be contributing ideas on how to improve and streamline the process, not just running it.

To Do This You’ll Own:

• The assurance review schedule as the DC book grows, keeping risk ratings accurate and ensuring each customer receives the right level of scrutiny.
• The review and closing out post-live conditions for newly onboarded DCs where applicable.
• Issuing assurance review requests, including scoping the right questions and sample requests based on entity type, operating model, and risk rating.
• In-depth reviews of DC responses, identifying gaps and weaknesses in their financial crime controls.
• The production of formal review reports with clear findings and a recommendation on whether a DC's risk rating should be maintained, increased, or decreased.
• Drafting and issuing recommendations to DCs, then tracking and following up until full closure is confirmed.
• The engagement with external stakeholders, including CEOs, MLROs, Compliance Managers, especially when sharing difficult findings or recommendations.

We expect you to shape this role. This description reflects what we need today. How you achieve these outcomes, where you focus your energy, how this role evolves—that's for you to define as you learn what our customers need and where our technical gaps are.

Your background:

• Experience working in financial crime compliance — ideally in an audit, assurance, oversight, or monitoring capacity, with hands‑on review experience rather than purely advisory or policy work.
• Hands‑on experience conducting financial crime audit or assurance reviews or assessments, including reviewing control frameworks and identifying gaps.
• Experience with writing reports and recommendations on the back of audit or assurance reviews.
• A solid understanding of financial crime controls: AML, sanctions, KYC, transaction monitoring, SARs, QA/QC and end‑to‑end onboarding and ongoing customer journeys.
• Confidence managing external relationships and having direct, sometimes difficult conversations with customers.
• Strong organisational skills and an analytical mindset — you'll be juggling reviews at different stages and spotting issues that aren't always obvious.
• A love of writing - we have a major amount of written documentation that you will be contributing to, and we place a high degree of importance on clarity and readability.

Ideally, you would also:

• Have familiarity with the different onboarding models within embedded finance a DC can use (managed, reliance, or outsourced) and how they affect the scope and depth of review.
• Hold a relevant financial crime qualification such as an ICA diploma, or have experience presenting findings to senior stakeholders.

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.

• Remote-first flexibility: Work from anywhere in the UK
• Work from abroad: Up to 20 days a year
• Time off: 25 days’ holiday, bank holidays and a winter break (we shut down between Christmas and New Year)
• Share options: Own a part of what we’re building together
• Pension: Auto‑enrolment into our Penfold scheme
• Insurance: Private medical with Bupa (including family cover) and life insurance with AIG
• Wellbeing: 1:1 coaching and therapy session available through Oliva
• Family leave: Enhanced parental leave with up to 6 months on full pay after two years’ service
• AI tools: Everyone has a Claude subscription on us and access to other premium tools
• Your setup: We’ll support you in creating a comfortable and effective WFH environment.

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. This would include verification of right to work, criminal record, credit history, social media and professional reference checks.

Under representation 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.