About Griffin
The company was founded by Silicon Valley engineers, Allen Rohner and David Jarvis (who co-founded tech unicorn CircleCI) and is led by an experienced team of banking and technology executives.
Griffin’s unique offering brings the power of SaaS to banking, with a developer-friendly Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform supported by a UK banking licence permitting full operational banking.
About the technology
Griffin offers fintechs and innovative brands a turn-key solution to offer banking, payments and wealth solutions to their customers.
Their full-stack platform is built from the ground up and provides the infrastructure and solutions for customers to seamlessly integrate financial products into their own apps via API’s. A developer-centric approach empowers developers to build and scale their financial solutions quickly.
Griffin also offers bank accounts (including interest bearing savings accounts), access to the UK’s payment rails, an integrated ledger and automated compliance technology.
A trailblazer in the UK fintech space – the competitive edge
Griffin’s full banking licence gives them an edge over other BaaS companies in the U.K. By leveraging its core banking platform and removing dependence on legacy tech from traditional banks (typically used by middleware BaaS providers), the company can fully own the delivery of financial products. This significantly reduces the cost to its customers. Griffin is also able to offer interest on customer deposits and its eligible customers enjoy FSCS protection.
Securing a full banking licence is a long, complex process. Earning the approval to enter this highly regulated environment is a significant achievement.
Moving forward and scaling
In March 2023, Griffin was authorised as a UK bank subject to restrictions and officially in mobilisation.
“Mobilisation is a feature unique to the UK. In this phase, Griffin could do certain technical work which could not previously be done . It allowed us to test the product with a small set of pilot customers while also testing the system to make sure everything was ready for scale,” according to David Jarvis, CEO of Griffin.
Griffin exited mobilisation and became fully operational in March 2024. The bank is now taking on new customers via its early access programme, Foundations.
With their license granted, Griffin also announced an additional $24 million in funding. This round was co-led by MassMutual Ventures, NordicNinja, and Breega, with continued support from existing investors Notion Capital and EQT Ventures.
CLP’s financing within Griffin’s journey to becoming a fully operational bank
CLP funded Griffin in the summer of 2021 when they had only raised seed funding, were applying for their banking licence and were not generating revenue. CLP’s facility allowed Griffin to extend their runway through the lengthy application process for a UK banking licence.
Daniel Bull, Partner at Columbia Lake Partners recalls, “I met David at a presentation CLP did for a group of Seedcamp portfolio companies. His knowledge of banking and his product ideas made him the perfect founder which led us to invest earlier than we typically do.”
“CLP’s flexible financing capital played an integral role in getting Griffin to the point we are today,” added David Jarvis.
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