Griffin switched to Ledgy to streamline their equity management and financial reporting

About Griffin

Griffin is a Banking-as-a-Service provider founded in 2017 in London by Allen Rohner and David Jarvis. In 2024, they went live and are fully operational, onboarding their first customers. 

About Amy Lock and Christian O’Malley

Amy Lock is Griffin’s Company Secretary. She started in January 2024 and looks after the corporate governance side of the business managing the board and the executive committee, as well as some of the legal function. When she joined, she took on equity as part of her job, taking care of the share options approval processes through granting and exercising. 

Christian O’Malley is Griffin’s Head of Finance. He looks after the finance department, accounting, and is very involved with controlling Griffin’s equity, regularly producing reconciliations and valuations for their monthly reporting and annual financial statements. 

A switch for the better 

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Griffin was previously using a US-based equity management platform to manage their equity. When Amy joined the team as Company Secretary, they had a batch of share option grants coming up, so they decided it was time to find something better to manage their equity. “Our previous provider just wasn’t user-friendly and our processes were very manual. When we came across Ledgy we thought it was fantastic. It has a great user interface, a clear employee dashboard and integrations which have proven to be very useful.” says Amy.

Since switching over, they’ve been able to issue new grants and invite their employees to Ledgy. “When you’ve got over 100 grants to issue, the automatic document templating and creation is a game-changer. The DocuSign integration makes the signatures that much simpler.” Amy says. “We also have the HRIS integration so we know there are no discrepancies in our employee contact information. It’s all automatically updated.” she continued. 

The biggest change has been the time Amy and her team have saved thanks to Ledgy’s document automation workflows, which are especially helpful for Griffin’s international team. “Previously it would have taken hours, but with Ledgy it’s very smooth and a matter of minutes. We’ve got a number of different templates for our different geographies, which would have been tricky and I would have been nervous about making mistakes if it were done manually. Having the templates there and just being able to upload the information to Ledgy for them to be filled in automatically has been great.” Amy says. 

Complex accounting done quickly 

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For Christian and Griffin’s finance team, Ledgy has also proven to be a great improvement, saving them lots of time. “Our previous provider was relatively basic, but since we’ve moved over, the ability to navigate and quickly obtain information at any time regarding an employee’s grants and vesting details has significantly changed for the better.” says Christian. 

Previously, accounting for their employee share options was done manually which made the process complex. “Before Ledgy, one of our largest and most complicated Excel workbooks was used for IFRS 2 accounting. There was lots of manual input and updating, especially if an employee left. Even just following it from tab to tab was challenging because of the amount of information it contained” says Christian. “Not only that but it would take more time for the auditors to go through it. An Excel model is an overcomplication for the process that’s just not needed if there’s a well designed tool available to handle it.” 

For this year’s audit, they’ve decided to use Ledgy for their financial reporting instead. “Ledgy’s IFRS 2 reporting tool has no problem handling various types of grants, whether simple or more complex, which is wonderful. It’s a great addition and we’re very happy to have chosen Ledgy.” says Christian. With Ledgy, they’ve been able to generate instant reports from the underlying, accurate grant data that’s also easy to update. “The calculations are concise and easily reconcilable, and you can add grants or update parameters in one place and know the change has been reflected accurately throughout the data set.” Christian says. “We are going through the audit at the moment, and it’s already significantly reduced the time needed to provide the underlying detail in the process” he continues. 

Christian especially appreciates how Ledgy’s approach to IFRS 2 reporting is so comprehensive and easy to follow. “The detailed report view is excellent. It literally takes all the underlying detail in the calculation and process and displays it in one worksheet, reconciling all the information you need by employee, grant, vesting tranche and numerous other paramaters.” he says. “In that one worksheet, you can trace the entire process. It is really well designed.” he continued. 

Unmatched support

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Throughout their time with Ledgy, both Amy and Christian have benefitted from the wonderful support offered by the Ledgy team. “I can’t praise our dedicated CX manager enough, he did so much for us. We migrated over months ago, it was really smooth, and he’s still so helpful now. Always super responsive, quick to rectify any discrepancies and he provided great training and support.” Amy says. 

When it comes to financial reporting, Christian has also found the expertise offered by Ledgy’s Head of Financial Reporting, Svein, to be a clear standout. “Svein has been one of the best persons I’ve ever had to work with for a new tool implementation. He has made himself available at any time, and really explained the process so well. He was brilliant in helping us set up and reconcile all our onboarding data and understand how to use Ledgy in a way that works best for us. I cannot recommend him highly enough.” he says. 

Great potential

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Since Griffin started using Ledgy,  there has been positive feedback from the team. “We have several administrators in the platform and we are all very comfortable with the data in Ledgy. More of our employees are engaging with Ledgy and their equity, looking at their holdings and forecasting what their value might be. It just works really well.” Amy says. 

As Griffin continues to grow, Ledgy and their team will continue to support them. “We are heading towards really exciting times as a business, and we’ll continue to expand our team and reach new geographies. This will introduce more nuances that I’m sure Ledgy will be able to help with” says Amy. 

Read more stories about Ledgy’s customers here.