Who we are and how we work

Our culture is our most important asset. It allows us to move quickly with a high default level of trust and autonomy.

We are explicit about our culture, because culture happens whether it is explicit or not. We want the culture we chose rather than the one we ended up with.

We safeguard our culture by being transparent, hiring the right people, and maintaining policies and frameworks that make clear what we won't tolerate.

Core values

Our core values are what we look for in our people.Our core values are descriptive, not aspirational. They describe us as we are, not as we would like to be. We won't work with people who don't embody our core values, even if they are a great fit in every other way.

Be deserving of trust

We measure ourselves against the highest standard of conduct.Banks are heavily regulated for good reason: we're responsible for keeping our customers' money safe. We take this obligation seriously, obeying the letter and the spirit of the law as well as going above and beyond to protect our customers.We have an active and transparent relationship with our regulators. As individuals, we aim to do the right thing the first time, and we always speak up if we think something is amiss.

Thoughtfulness

We take our time.We believe in planning things out before we start to build. We solicit feedback. We weigh different approaches. We look at all the outcomes before we make our move.We're not shipping a hackathon project, we're laying the foundations for the future of global financial infrastructure. It's okay if it takes a bit longer to get things up and running. This doesn't mean we move slowly. It means we move deliberately.

Kindness and empathy

We assume the best of each other.We choose words and actions that communicate our consideration, kindness and empathy. We don't assume that our positive intentions will be communicated by default – instead, we work to make them felt in everything we do and say.We express gratitude when things go well. We offer support when things go wrong. We look for context and rationale instead of assuming ignorance or bad faith.

Core behaviours

Our core behaviours describe how we run the company. These don't describe us as individuals, but describe the philosophies we rely on in building products and in operating on a day-to-day basis.

These are obviously not descriptive — for instance, we don't need people to think of themselves as being “simple”. But we do expect them to learn about these behaviours and to adopt them while working here.

Simple made easy

Reduce complexity where possible.There is a lot about banking infrastructure that is inherently complex. For the most part, our customers don't want to have to deal with that complexity. Our approach is always to clarify and simplify.We look for places where needless complexity can be encapsulated. We then wrap those encapsulations in simple interfaces.

Resilience

Build to last.As a bank, our customers need to have faith that we’ll be there for them tomorrow — and the day after that, and the day after that. For us to foster that faith, we need a remarkable amount of stability, security, and anti-fragility.That resilience is human, institutional, and bound into our system designs. We recognise that the risk of things going wrong can’t ever be fully eliminated, and so we work hard to ensure that the business is always able to deliver what our customers need from us.

Transparent

Open by default.We believe that high-functioning people are deeply driven by purpose and autonomy. But, as a company, people can only function effectively under autonomy if they have context. That's why our leadership shares as much as possible about everything that happens here – from our financial position to major strategic decisions.We also believe that companies can move faster when individual teams are talking to each other on a regular basis. We place a heavy emphasis on writing and we encourage all our teams to get into the habit of publishing their work across the whole company.We are clear and succinct in how we write. We don't obfuscate with jargon or elide responsibility with the passive voice. Anyone should be able to pick up a Griffin document and understand what it says.