Grasshopper Bank: Building a fintech culture and saving 2k hours per month with Google Workspace

Instead of building around Microsoft on-premises infrastructure which is designed for branch operations, Grasshopper instead chose Workspace from its founding in 2019 to reflect the bank's fundamental philosophy of innovation over convention.

"We needed a comprehensive ecosystem that would allow us to act as if we were in person together," Chapman says. "With Google Workspace, we can collaborate on shared documents, whenever and wherever. I actually think we're more productive working remotely through Google Workspace than we would be in person."

Real-time collaboration capabilities enabled the agile team workflows that Grasshopper envisioned. Teams can easily work together on projects from shared Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, aligning with Grasshopper's core competitive advantage: execution speed.

"One of the reasons Grasshopper stands out in the market is we make decisions and execute more quickly than the competition," Chapman says. "Google Workspace helps us remove technical hurdles and friction points that block people from doing their jobs."

Among those hurdles are the strict rules of a highly regulated industry. As a licensed and chartered bank, securing clients' data must always come first. "We operate in probably the most regulated industry on the planet," Chapman continues. "Google Workspace combines enterprise-grade security with collaborative capabilities in a way that traditional banking infrastructure can't match."

Using data loss prevention (DLP) within Workspace, Grasshopper created rules to control what information is shared internally and externally with clients. Where conventional institutions might require days of approvals for document sharing, these automated DLP rules enable proactive collaboration while maintaining security.

The integration of Google Vault also enables seamless regulatory compliance without getting in the way of innovation by providing clear audit trails. This ease of use, automated security, and all-in-one platform has empowered Grasshopper's lean IT team of just three people to support the entire digital bank.

True to its foundation as a forward-thinking organization, Grasshopper began exploring generative AI in early 2024. The team initially piloted an open AI tool but faced regulatory constraints around client data access. "We had to restrict AI use for any confidential data, which took a hundred use cases down to maybe 15," Chapman explains.

However, Google Workspace with Gemini changed everything. "Gemini doesn't train on confidential data," Chapman continues. "We rolled it out to everyone at the bank, making sure people understand that AI is not here to replace them but to help them."

To encourage usage of Gemini, Grasshopper established weekly AI syncs to share use cases and measure adoption. The early results have already been transformative: Grasshopper now saves over 2,000 hours per month through Gemini, with use cases spanning every department. Developers use Gemini to increase productivity while reducing external spending, the Small Business Administration (SBA) lending team uses it to streamline client communications, and project managers use it to focus on facilitation rather than documentation.

For Chapman, the "aha" moment happened organically. "I ran a meeting about hiring for a role, then asked Gemini to write a job description," he says. "It referenced everything I'd discussed in the meeting, sourced data from corporate policies on Google Drive, and created 90% of the job description in seconds."

Grasshopper's use of Workspace enables increasingly sophisticated capabilities. The bank is now developing an agent-based system using Gemini Enterprise to give employees secure, natural language access to all bank data across Google Drive documents and core banking systems via BigQuery integration. "If I'm building a forecast for 2026, I need to look at 2025 growth and combine it with economic trends," Chapman explains. "Our customized Grasshopper version of Gemini, built with Gemini Enterprise, will be trained securely on our data to make those things possible."

This reflects Grasshopper's philosophy of technology enabling rather than constraining culture. By choosing digital-native tools from day one and building its culture around rapid adaptation, Grasshopper positioned itself to attract next-generation talent while serving clients with expected agility.

"In the banking sector, choosing legacy technology is the safe bet, but many institutions are just stuck in an outdated mentality," Chapman says. "By choosing Google Workspace, we've increased our security, efficiency, and uptime while building a future-ready banking experience."