Senior Operations Lead

Since Aspen was founded in 2002, we have become a leading, diversified specialty insurance and reinsurance company. We respond thoughtfully and creatively to find the best outcomes for our clients and business partners through carefully-tailored solutions.

We believe the way we work is just as important as the work we do, and we are guided by our core values of respect, honesty, trust and professionalism.

Aspen is a great place to develop your career offering an exciting and challenging environment where achievement is rewarded.

The work pattern for the job is Hybrid 

The minimum and maximum salaries for this job role are below:

Minimum Salary -  99,200.00 

Maximum Salary -  124,000.00 

The Role

The Senior Operations Lead is accountable for developing a process excellence strategy and deployment roadmap that meets the desired outcomes of the organization. The role will be key in developing and nurturing strong partnerships to understand specific business issues and priorities to effectively integrate standards and continuous improvement into their core processes. This role will also partner with Business Functional areas to translate strategy into project initiatives and actions that drive growth, process excellence, and efficiencies.

Key Accountabilities

• Contributes to, monitors and advises on plan developments and changes in order to ensure relevancy, compliance and optimal delivery.
• Collaborates, supports the preparation and implementation of the operational team plans to ensure these are in line with wider business strategy and reflect key priorities.
• Determines own work priorities and activities in line with agreed plans to ensure the achievement of the function’s objectives.
• Create and deliver strategy and roadmap to drive process redesign and excellence across the Insurance segment.
• Support the continued development and improvement of US Operations.
• Manages the level of service availability delivered to ensure service matches, or exceeds, the current and future needs of the business.
• Benchmarking of delivery to plan objectives.
• Management team feedback.
• Alignment, and engagement of team to tactical goals.
• Relevancy, accuracy and timeliness of contribution/advice.
• Priorities aligned to tactical and wider strategic plans.
• Positive stakeholder feedback.
• Identifies/supports continuous improvement and step-change opportunities, to increase cost effectiveness and/or efficiency.
• Serve as Process Excellence Coach and Practitioner embedding continuous improvement focus, developing lean capabilities and behaviours
• Lead the delivery of a Process Optimization effort with specific responsibility of initiatives and continuous improvement practices and routines.
• Guide the current state and future state, implementation plan, along with impact and value of changes (in strong cooperation with business or service unit experts).
• Develop and nurture strong partnerships to understand specific business issues and priorities to effectively integrate continuous improvement into their organization.
• Use a standard set of Process Excellence/Problem Solving tools and analyses to develop insight, solutions and drive the consistent use of Process Excellence standards in the delivery of Value Stream or Function.
• Responsible for the consistent and successful delivery of agreed standard work.
• Guide training and problem-solving workshops with senior managers & teams.
• Coach senior leaders to be effective in their roles as sponsors; and coach leaders at all levels on their role to support and sustain continuous improvement in their area including their own management practices and routines.
• Perform financial and operational analysis to recommend appropriate actions to improve productivity and the optimization of resources.
• May act as a project manager on some projects.
• Participate in business process modeling sessions, acting as a documentarian, co-facilitator, facilitator, or subject matter expert in sketch sessions.
• Contribute to user reference, training, and testing materials by providing requirements and process context.
• Work with end-users to document business processes, cost/benefit analysis presentations, and documentation including analysis of the impact on existing systems and procedures.
• Participate in business process management efforts to drive, develop, collect, and monitor data quality
• Analyze metrics and make recommendations to leadership identifying opportunities and solutions for improvement.
• Ensure data and reporting needs are satisfied.
• Actively and collaboratively drive business engagement and group sessions acting as Product Owner for key systems
• Manage a specific team within the function/department or specialism to ensure that people, resources and processes are aligned with business needs and fit for purpose.
• Manage, resource, motivate, develop and focus the team to ensure the required standards of performance and support the continuing personal and professional development of all team members.
• Manage appointment, dismissal, performance management and reward of the team to effectively manage resources within the function.
• Establish clear accountabilities and authority levels for direct reports and build a strong culture of accountability and performance to ensure delivery of goals.
• Skilled, capable and competent team members.
• Clear statement of roles and responsibilities within the business.
• All direct reports have appropriate SMART objectives set.
• All direct reports have a quality personal development plan.
• The team is adequately staffed and developed to support succession plan.
• Timely completion of Performance & Development plans mid-year and end of year review as a minimum standard.
• Positive feedback on people management from team and business.
• Regular one-to-one meetings with team members.
• Actively mentors team members to assist their personal development

Skills & Experience

• 7+ years of experience as a Lean management or process excellence leader with demonstrated success in leading transformational change.
• Experience in the financial services or insurance industries and an understanding of operational management practices (preferred)
• Lean or similar certification, or experience implementing continuous improvement principles in service environments/organizations (e.g., Business Agility, Lean management techniques, Six Sigma certification, etc.)
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Leader with strong work ethic, accountability, timely follow-up, team and detail oriented with high energy who strives for excellence.
• Customer service and relationship building skills.
• Ability and comfort level in researching inquiries and emerging issues, including regulations, industry practices and new technologies.
• Highly proficient in Microsoft Office such as Excel and Power Point creation for executive audience
• Proactive with ability to collaborate and work as part of a team – making informed decisions in a fast-paced environment.
• Effective time management skills with the ability to manage priorities to meet firm deadlines and multi-task.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• A change agent, excellent at managing change both at an organizational level and at an individual level
• Bachelor’s degree in risk management, Accounting, Insurance, Finance, Business, or other related fields.
• MBA degree preferred.
• Strong knowledge of the Insurance Industry.
• High level understanding of admitted state regulations.
• Sound knowledge of problem analysis, structure analysis, and process optimization techniques
• Strong understanding of underlying needs of the business and how own role contributes to these.
• Business and financial awareness of the impact of Service Levels and any associated failures
• Communicate schedules, priorities, and status to all levels in the company

At Aspen we know that having a diverse and inclusive workforce is good for our people, good for our business and good for the environments in which we operate.  We therefore welcome applications from people which allows us to draw on diverse cultures, perspectives, skills and experiences.