Griffin
I initially joined Griffin as VP People. Within six months I’d also taken on running the banking licence application project, a major cross-organisation initiative that was literally fundamental to the business’s success. I held the fort down while there were a number of changes in the leadership team. The Board recommended me for the Chief Operating Officer role when our former COO resigned. After taking that role, I swiftly upskilled myself and built an exceptional operations team that spanned payment operations, fincrime operations, customer success and special projects.
Over my three years at Griffin, we went from a ~20 person tech company working on regulatory documents and banking infrastructure, to a fully-fledged, fully-authorised UK bank with 100 employees, a successful Series B fundraise, and ten enterprise clients going live on the platform bringing a projected £10m revenue in year one.
As Chief Operating Officer:
Led successful cross-organisation initiatives: authorisation as a UK bank, from application to mobilisation and full banking permissions; embedding thematic regulation across engineering, product, marketing and operations (operational resilience, Consumer Duty); company-wide offsites bringing the distributed org together.
Established Customer Success and Support functions in close collaboration with commercial teams: internal education; leading on customer engagement for initial pilot customers; member of exec steering committee for “launchpad” GTM programme.
Owned third party relationships, including with both regulatory bodies (PRA & FCA), as well as agency banking relationships, SWIFT, Bank of England, PRA & FCA, UK Finance and the Payments Association.
Internal SME for product discovery and development around internal tooling, customer experience and payments (with finance).
Core contributor to product working group, including strategy and prioritisation.
Standing in for CEO when required with full delegated authority, including running the Exec team, press interviews, reporting to the Board and investors; selected as interim successor for both CEO and CTO on the Board-approved executive succession plan.
Voting member of executive-level committees: Executive Committee, Tech & Ops Committee, Asset & Liabilities Committee and Executive Risk Committee; Chair of Economic Crime Committee; standing attendee at Board, Board Risk Committee and Board Audit Committee.
Retained most of the VP People responsibilities through the COO role.
As VP People:
Scaled company from 27 to 55 including stabilising the org through key exec turnover (risk, finance, product); part of hiring panel for non-exec Board members.
Developed hiring assumptions and scaling ratios for 5-year financial forecast based on business volume projections and expected customer cohorts; and established hiring planning cadence in alignment with fundraising, business goals and core regulatory processes.
Embedding culture and values at all touchpoints throughout the people lifecycle.
Member of Executive Committee, standing attendee of Board People & Governance Co and Board meetings.
Initiating engagement surveys, with 90%+ response rates.
Developing policies, including parental leave, DEIB, Remuneration Policy, SM&CR.
Internal comms and community: organising, structuring and hosting offsites, remote socials, in-person workshops, and company all-hands meetings.
Led banking licence application process, including project management, production of core regulatory documents and policies, and internal governance (from exec level through to Board).
Stood in as interim CRO & finance team lead during exec team absences, including managing Internal Audit relationship, insurance strategy, relationship with regulators, treasury, financial statement preparation.