AVP, Business Analyst, ACM & Ceded 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 -  114,400.00 

Maximum Salary -  143,000.00 

The Role:

The ACM / Ceded Business Analyst role will be part of the business analysis community of practice, working directly with ACM Capital Partners and Ceded Operations to provide consistent, accurate and complete business analysis to support the delivery of change activities aligned with the EPMO Change Delivery Framework (CDF).

The role holder will have responsibility across the following areas:

• Elicitation, identification and capture of business requirements (functional and non-functional)
• Supporting project teams to maintain focus on traceability of requirements through the project lifecycle to deliverables, test cases, cut over and business hand over
• Support business stakeholders in identifying priorities and articulating underlying needs

Our Aspen Values are expected to be reflected in the delivery and performance of every role.

Key Accountabilities:

• Work with business Stakeholders, EPMO Project Managers, Delivery Managers, Architects and Application Development / Test teams to provide relevant inputs from initiation to implementation to BAU to support successful delivery of project outcomes
• Process design, re-engineering and process mapping
• Provides support to project teams and business stakeholders to achieve positive results for the business in line with strategy
• Produce deliverables in accordance with Aspen’s ‘best practice’ quality procedures, to ensure consistency and quality across the Change function
• Proactively manage workloads and competing priorities, taking appropriate action where necessary, to address potential issues that could impact deliverables
• Comply with external and internal regulatory and statutory policies, procedures and regulations to ensure Aspen meets regulatory obligations
• Maintains knowledge of organisational regulatory/legislative requirements and ensures appropriate consideration is applied through core deliverables across the lifecycle of the project.
• As a senior domain expert and designated point of contact for others, drive and challenge business stakeholders on requirements to identify true underlying needs
• Serve as liaison between business (internal and external customers), IT / Data, and applicable support teams, to support collaboration and communication between parties
• Collaborate with architects, developers and SMEs to follow Aspen’s technical vision and understand trade-offs between usability and performance needs
• Manage stakeholder expectations through relevant and regular communication to provide stakeholders with visibility on progress and any challenges / issues
• Develop strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders to ensure service delivery meets expectations
• Be an effective team member by supporting colleagues and contributing to the delivery of team and business objectives, to promote continuous improvement and team collaboration
• Ensure requirements are appropriately articulated and managed to provide clarity on the requirements for consumers e.g. developers, testers and business customers
• Take an active role (and be prepared to facilitate) in Project / Programme and other meetings to support project delivery, e.g. requirements gathering workshops
• Elicit, document and prioritise business & technical requirements, and technical specifications (if required), by engaging with business stakeholders and applying commonly used techniques, to a high level of quality, to ensure clarity on vision and scope
• Capture and document business processes (‘as-is’ & ‘to-be’) to ensure clear understanding of impacted areas of the business and desired 'end-state'
• Critically evaluate information and solution designs gathered from multiple sources, reconcile conflicts, and decompose high-level information, to understand true requirements and uncover dependencies, challenges and better solutions
• Facilitating & co-ordinating user acceptance testing & training, including the preparation of test scripts and co-ordinating UAT
• Support change deliverables through the project lifecycle (e.g. business impact and change readiness assessments) so that business needs are understood supported through change
• May manage and support graduates, consultants and contractors.
• If managing team members, then
• Manage, resource, motivate, develop, and focus team members to ensure the required standards of performance and support their personal and professional development
• Manage appointment, dismissal, performance management and reward 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

Skills & Experience:

• Minimum of 5 years of experience in business analysis and business change throughout the full project lifecycle.
• Insurance industry experience, specifically exposure to outward reinsurance (i.e., Ceded Reinsurance).
• Experience with non-traditional reinsurance arrangements (insurance-linked securities, third-party capital in a (re)insurance setting)
• Experience working Data and ETL processes
• SoX knowledge.
• Financial reporting / MI exposure
• Able to work effectively at all management levels
• Strong influencing and facilitation skills
• Good analytical and problem-solving skills
• Able to work in a fast-moving environment with rapidly evolving targets and priorities
• Strong customer focus
• High proficiency in working through complex business challenges and determining root causes of problems
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills and able to interact professionally with a diverse group of stakeholders, including SMEs
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills; able to take the initiative and identify creative solutions to problems
• Good decision-making skills, considering conflicting opinions and emerging facts

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.