FAST Business Analyst

The Senior Business Analyst operates as a senior/lead team member of a consulting team, assisting assigned Insurance Carrier project teams ( "our customers") to implement, integrate, leverage, and enhance the FAST platform. The role primarily involves consultative activity to understand and align customer objectives with the platform capabilities and leading teams to configure, learn, implement, and manage the platform to run their business. The Senior Business Analyst works autonomously and uses sound judgment to solve problems, support the customer and client team members and collaborate with product owners and SMEs. They handle the most complex and crucial tasks that are vital to the organization.



Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Project engagement: May oversee, direct, or participate in concurrent project assignments, ensuring they meet company goals and industry standards. Manage schedules, prioritize, and assign stories to team members to accomplish targets and deliverables. Lead design sessions on business functionality and product logic with customers.
• Team Collaboration: Collaborate with business, IT, actuarial, and operations teams to define objectives, offer recommendations, and align project goals. Mentor and guide junior analysts, fostering their professional growth and skill development.
• Market Expertise: Leverage in-depth knowledge of the life insurance and annuity markets to analyze trends, regulatory changes, and competitive landscape.
• Data Analysis & Reporting: Use data analytics to evaluate and improve business processes, identify performance metrics, and generate insightful reports. Regularly update customers and team on project deliverables and deadlines.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Serve as a lead contact between stakeholders, product owners and project teams. Ensure transparency, manage expectations, and support decision-making with clear information.
• Process Improvement: Identify areas for process optimization and drive initiatives to enhance operational efficiency. Implement best practices and recommend tools or systems to streamline workflows and improve service delivery.
• Change Management: Assist in change management initiatives to ensure smooth transitions for stakeholders and users when implementing new systems or processes.
• Testing and Validation: Oversee the testing process to ensure that solutions meet business requirements, including user acceptance testing (UAT) and validation of deliverables.
• Strategic Planning: Contribute to strategic planning sessions, providing insights and recommendations based on data analysis and market trends.

Qualifications
• Bachelor's degree in business administration, finance, economics, or a related field (master's degree or certifications are a plus).

• minimum of 5 years of experience in business analysis or consulting and working as part of agile teams driving technology improvements and implementations (having led projects preferred).
• Proficiency in industry-standard software and tools, such as SQL, Excel, Tableau, JIRA, Confluence, and business intelligence applications.
• Knowledge of life insurance products with experience across at least some of, term life, whole life, universal life, variable life, annuities, and group. Knowledge of the policy lifecycle and how different products are serviced over time. LOMA certifications are a plus.
• Strong analytical skills to breakdown complex customer objectives and provide appropriate solutions within the context of the FAST application. Ability to negotiate terms with customers, ensuring that the solutions provided are feasible and meet the customer's expectations.
• strong focus on delivering value to customers, ensuring that their needs are prioritized while balancing operational and regulatory constraints. Be flexible in adapting solutions to meet changing customer needs, market conditions, or regulatory changes.
• Communication & Presentation: Excellent communication skills, particularly in articulating complex product features and benefits to customers in a clear, concise, and persuasive manner.
• Communication and Interpersonal skills: Excellent verbal and written communication skills to convey complex information clearly to various stakeholders. Strong relationship-building skills to foster collaboration across departments.

Technical skills
• bility to write SQL queries to aid in identifying patterns, validating data, and supporting decision making processing actionable insights.

• bility to analyze and parse xml files ensuring business processes and data are accurate and consistent.
• Expertise in excel
• Expertise or ability to learn how to look through software logs for troubleshooting, identifying system errors and ensuring the proper functioning of business processes.