Compliance Advisory Manager (1st line)

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 You'll join our Operational Controls team within the Service guild, the backbone of how Griffin stays compliant and keeps operational risk visible and manageable as we scale. Working closely with Protect (our second line) and across all operations functions, you'll be the first person dedicated to compliance within the team. You'll define what great compliance support looks like here, keeping Griffin's products and customer outcomes in shape as we grow. The Service Guild at Griffin is the mindful engine room, driving our success. We strive to bring joy to our customers, both internal and external, through systems that just work. There are four core elements to operations at Griffin: fincrime, payments, treasury ops and operational resilience. Across all teams, we place significant emphasis on compassion, ownership and curiosity. You will be empowered to make meaningful decisions and supported to make sure we collectively get those decisions right. The opportunity We want compliance built into how we design, sell and run our products. As our hands on compliance adviser in the first line (the teams who run the business and own its risks), you'll bring regulatory expertise to help our operations, commercial and product teams do exactly that. With card issuing and other launches coming up, there's plenty to get stuck into. What success looks like In your first year, our operations, sales and product teams bring you in early by default, because working with you makes things smoother, not slower. You've guided at least one major launch, like card issuing, from first idea to go live. Our live products have clear governance and outcome monitoring, and Protect (our second line risk and compliance team) sees fewer surprises and finds a stronger compliance foundation in place. To do this you'll be involved in:
• Product development: turning regulation into clear requirements, customer journeys, T&Cs and fair value assessments from first idea through product approval to launch.
• Product lifecycle management: keeping live products compliant through periodic fair value assessments, outcome monitoring, reviews, changes and closures.
• Sales: helping our commercial team check early whether potential partners fit our risk appetite, and reviewing sales material.
• Marketing: working on both our marketing materials and ensuring that our customer's marketing materials are compliant with regulation and our own internal policies. Also ensuring that our own financial promotions are compliant and challenged appropriately.
• Service (Operations): building regulatory requirements into how Service works day to day, with procedures and controls people actually use.
• Regulatory change: working out what new rules mean for us, and making sure the right teams make the right changes on time.
• Issues and reporting: investigating and fixing compliance issues, and reporting clearly on compliance risks and customer outcomes.
• Working with second line (Protect): bringing them in early, sharing the evidence they need, and acting on their challenge. 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 To ensure this, we're looking for people who have:
• Compliance experience in the first or second line of a UK regulated firm, ideally a bank, e-money institution or payments firm.
• Practical knowledge of the rules behind our products , like Consumer Duty, BCOBS, CASS, FISMA, the Payment Services Regulations and the Money Laundering Regulations.
• A hands on approach. You've turned regulation into practical requirements for product, sales or operations teams, and you're comfortable interpreting and applying FCA rules to new situations.
• A curious, questioning approach. You know the right questions to ask before signing something off, not just the rules to check it against.
• The confidence to challenge , clearly and kindly, when something isn't right.
• 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:
• Have deep expertise in at least one specialist area , such as payments, cards, Consumer Duty, BCOBS, financial promotions or similar.
• Have worked in finance or Banking. 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: £ 80-90 (DOE)
• 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 How long will the process take? We move as fast as possible, but it normally takes us about 2-3 weeks to get to know to each other.
• Step 1: An initial phone call with our Talent Team for us to tell you more about Griffin and learn about your recent experience.
• Step 2: Meet your manager to talk through your experience and ho