POSITION SUMMARY: The Business Analyst serves as a liaison among stakeholders with the goal of understanding the structure, policies, and operations of the Underwriting department and recommending solutions to enable the department and organization to achieve its goals. The position incumbent must demonstrate customer-centric behavior and a broad understanding of property insurance principles, investigation, policy interpretation, residential and commercial construction techniques. This role can be performed remotely.
ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS: The following are the usual, basic and essential functions of the position. However, this job description does not preclude the performance of other duties by the incumbent. These functions are not to be construed as an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, and skills required:
- Serve as primary interface between business unit, support teams and IT department in order to elicit, analyze, communicate and validate requirements for changes to business processes, policies and information systems.
- Serve as a department interface to define the scope of IT development or enhancement projects including defining, documenting and developing detailed business requirements documents, developing policies and procedures, creating testing and implementation plans, and promoting the needs and interests of the department.
- Assist department management and collaborate with IT through the service lifecycle.
- Evaluate information gathered from multiple sources, reconcile conflicts, disseminate high-level concepts into details, distinguish actual needs, identify root cause of problems and create logical and innovative solutions.
- Research and resolve business problems by identifying root causes, gathering input from key stakeholders, and researching and recommending appropriate solution options. Provides regular status reports and problem resolution summaries.
- Collect, analyze and report performance data to identify, prioritize, and deliver improvements to the department. Develop and analyze metrics and prepare analytical reports.
- Assist in assessing training needs. Develop and implement effective training programs, utilizing all appropriate delivery methods, including classroom training, on-the-job training, webinars, teleconferences, eLearning, reference materials and job aids.
- Assist in developing Underwriting processes and procedures and defining deliverables for system development, system operation, change control, and training.
REQUIRED EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE:
- Three (3) years of business analyst or similar experience
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience
- Intermediate knowledge of operating systems, email, word processing and similar computer applications including the Microsoft Office Suite.
REQUIRED KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES:
- Ability to manage projects, conduct in-depth interviews, observations, research, documentation, and cost benefit analyses
- Excellent written and oral presentations skills, including clear, effective verbal and written communication skills, and the ability to actively listen, problem solve, and communicate effectively with both business and technical users
- Ability to analyze and document complex business processes
- Demonstrates a proficient understanding of customer needs from a business and technical perspective
- Intermediate to advanced level MS office skills for MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Visio
- Aptitude to multi task projects and think analytically as issues arise
- Ability to gather and interpret relevant data and information
- Demonstrated experience working both as an individual contributor and as part of a team
- Strong customer service skills and the ability to meet internal and external stakeholder customer requirements
- Ability to exercise independent judgment in methods, techniques and evaluation criteria for obtaining results.
REQUIRED COMPETENCIES:
- Communication: Makes clear and convincing oral presentations and written documents (to individuals and groups) that achieve their purpose.
- Customer Focus: Identifies customer’s needs and requirements correctly and provides value added solutions; acts proactively for ensuring customer satisfaction.
- Interpersonal Skills: Demonstrate personal respect for others and conveys an understanding of others’ needs, feelings and perspectives.
- Decision Making: Uses effective approaches for choosing a course of action or developing appropriate solutions. Makes timely and sound decisions by comparing data from different sources to draw conclusions. Understands the impact and implications of decisions and provides feedback on outcomes. Takes responsibility for decisions.
- Critical Thinking: Approaches a situation or problem by defining the problem or issue, determining its significance, collecting data, making inferences about the meaning of the data, and using logic and intuition to arrive at conclusions or decisions.
- Job Knowledge: Possesses the level of technical and functional knowledge necessary to meet individual performance targets and perform the required duties as outlined in the position description.
- Initiative: Independently completes tasks and assignments with little or minimal direction.
PREFERRED EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE:
- Five (5) years of experience as a business analyst
- Two (2) years of experience in the insurance industry
- Underwriting experience
- Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter designation (CPCU), or demonstrated substantial progress toward achieving the designation
PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS:
- This position requires the ability to sit, hear, converse over the telephone, and key frequently on a computer for long periods of time
- This position may require some limited overnight travel to complete training programs, activities, and meetings