Assurance Manager

Griffin; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 54,000 - 66,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-first flexibility

Work from anywhere in the UK

Up to 20 days abroad

25 days holiday

Pension: Auto-enrolment

Private medical with Bupa (including:2

Life insurance with AIG

Wellbeing: Coaching/therapy via Oliva

Enhanced parental leave

Claude subscription

WFH setup support

Job summary

Griffin is a fully regulated UK bank powering accounts and payments for fintechs and platforms. We are remote-first, operating across the UK, with a growing assurance function focused on financial crime.

We’re expanding our risk and control framework, offering a flexible, autonomous environment and exposure to senior leadership on governance matters. The Head of Assurance leads independent reviews and reports to the CRO, MLRO and risk committees as Griffin scales its BaaS capabilities.

Qualifications

• Assurance, audit or QC experience including testing controls.
• Financial crime experience with regulatory framework knowledge.
• Ability to raise uncomfortable findings and defend them when warranted.
• Experience in a regulated financial services environment.
• Good judgment and coordination to support a combined assurance model.
• Strong writing for clear documentation and reporting.

Responsibilities

• Deliver independent assurance reviews and testing across the business with a focus on financial crime.
• Manage the financial crime scope within the assurance plan, aligning with the MLRO.
• Embed the combined assurance approach with Compliance, Risk, FinCrime and Internal Audit.
• Set the evidence bar for remediation and verify fixes hold.
• Own and maintain the actions tracker and backlog to keep progress.
• Produce assurance workpapers and reports for risk committees when needed.
• Help mature testing methodology, templates and tooling as the function grows.

Skills

Assurance/audit experience

Financial crime experience

Regulated FS experience

Stakeholder management

Strong writing skills

Education

ICA financial crime / CAMS / IIA qualification

Job description

About Griffin

Hi, we’re Griffin. We’re a fully regulated UK bank that powers the accounts and payments offerings of product-led fintechs and platforms like Uber, Yonder, Prosper, and Sidekick. By doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes, our customers can focus on what they do best - delivering amazing customer experiences.

We’ve grown rapidly since our launch in 2024, and today provide the banking backbone behind products in remittance, payroll, wealth, insurance, proptech, payments, neobanking and more.

We’re moving into card issuing, stablecoin infrastructure, and agentic finance next as we continue to support the next generation of product-led companies.

Learn more about what we do

Our culture

We believe that smart, motivated, conscientious people thrive in high-trust, high-autonomy environments and have done our best to create such an environment at Griffin. People who thrive here don’t require much hand-holding, and go out of their way to figure out how to contribute in the most valuable way possible.

We've been remote-first since we were established in 2017 and we remain so today. Work here is asynchronous and fully flexible - because we want to be a part of your life in a way that helps you to get the most out of both your work and home life.

We understand that our culture and ways of working aren’t for everyone, and we’re very intentional about our hiring process as a result. We won't hire people who don’t seem like a strong fit for our core values, even if they're otherwise extremely qualified.

Our strong culture has helped us to remain a mission-driven company as we have scaled, and gives our people a clear, explicit operating framework and the space to focus on delivering real value for our customers.

Learn more about our culture.

The team

Assurance is how we check that our risk management, controls and governace hold up in practice, not just on paper and we're growing the team to keep pace with the business. Our Head of Assurance, oversees and leads independent reviews across the business as part of our second line of defence, working closely with Compliance, Risk, FinCrime and our internal audit partner, to keep Griffin's risk and control environment sharp as we grow.

The opportunity

We're expanding assurance from the ground up, and financial crime is where we need depth first. You'll build and run our financial crime assurance coverage, alongside assurance reviews across the rest of the business, working with real independence because Griffin's BaaS model throws up challenges you won't see everywhere — nested customers, reliance-model relationships, cross-border payment flows. You'll report to our Head of Assurance, with a dotted line to our MLRO for financial crime priorities. You'll get direct exposure to our CRO and Exco, the kind of visibility you'd rarely get in a similar role at a larger bank, and you'll help shape how we test, report and close out findings as the function matures.

What success looks like

Within 6 months, you'll have delivered three to four assurance reviews end-to-end, with no material quality concerns raised. You'll have built a working relationship with first line teams that gets you fast access to the information you need. By 12 months, you'll have measurably grown our assurance capacity, reducing overdue actions and giving the team confidence that coverage is holding up as we scale.

To do this you’ll own

• Deliver independent assurance reviews, thematic deep dives and control testing across the business, with a focus on financial crime

• Manage the financial crime scope within the assurance plan, agreeing priorities directly with the MLRO, and manage other assurance scope as directed by the Head of Assurance

• Help embed the combined assurance approach with Compliance, Risk, FinCrime and Internal Audit, avoiding overlap while protecting independence

• Set the evidence bar for remediation, checking fixes actually hold rather than just looking closed on paper

• Own and maintain our actions tracker, keeping the backlog moving

• Produce assurance workpapers and reports that stand up to scrutiny, and represent the Head of Assurance at our risk and audit committees (ERCO/BRC) or other governance committees when needed

• Help us mature our testing methodology, templates and tooling as the function grows

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 where our risk sit and where our control and other gaps are.

Your background:

To ensure this, we're looking for people who have:

• Assurance, audit or QC experience that includes testing controls, not just reviewing against a checklist

• Financial crime experience as a reviewer, process owner, consultant, or within a prior assurance role plus solid knowledge of the UK regulatory framework (POCA, SAR obligations, FCA/PRA expectations)

• A track record of raising uncomfortable findings when they're warranted and standing behind them unless new evidence says otherwise

• Experience working in a regulated financial services environment

• The judgement to hold a challenging conversation with the first line without damaging the relationship, and the coordination skills to keep a combined assurance model working smoothly

• 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 (you can find out more here about how we write)
  

Ideally, you would also:

Hold a relevant qualification (ICA financial crime, CAMS, or IIA), or bring model validation, prudential risk, or tech assurance experience.

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.

• Salary: up to £60k

• 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 sessions 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

Our interview process

We typically run a six-stage interview process:

1. Talent screen

2. Technical interview with hiring manager

3. Task

4. Peer interview

5. Culture interview

6. Founders chat

The whole process takes around 2-3 weeks from start to finish.

We’re remote-first

We trust people to do great work wherever they are. We hire across the UK and most of our team works remotely full-time. We have a small London office in Moorgate for those who want it, and about a third of the company is close enough to use it occasionally, but there's no expectation to be there. What matters is the work, not where you do it.

Under representation

At Griffin, we’re looking for people who instinctively vibe with our values, behaviours and mission. You’re encouraged to apply, even if your experience doesn’t tick every box. Careers, like life, can take many twists and turns. Your technical expertise and path to where you are today will stand out. We’re committed to creating a place where everyone belongs and we welcome diverse perspectives, backgrounds and people who are ready to build a global platform for programmable finance