Job Description

The Business Strategy & Execution Lead is a promotional opportunity for Senior Business Analysts who demonstrate strong consultative, analytical, and cross-functional leadership skills. This role is focused on helping business stakeholders define operational needs, assess opportunities, shape strategic initiatives, and engage effectively with Digital Services. The Business Strategy & Execution Lead serves as a day-to-day liaison between the business and Digital, evaluates business performance and operational effectiveness, and helps coordinate cross-functional efforts through completion in alignment with business priorities.

The Business Strategy & Execution Lead role requires an advanced understanding of insurance workflows, systems, and operational processes, along with strong business analysis, stakeholder coordination, problem-solving, and delivery support skills. The successful candidate will be proactive, service-oriented, and comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast-moving environments where they must earn stakeholder trust, recognize emerging business needs, and guide effective engagement between business teams and Digital Services.

The Business Strategy & Execution Lead is a member of the Surplus & Specialty Lines (SSL) Digital Services team, supporting Underwriting, Claims, and Billing & Collections business units, as well as strategic business initiatives across the organization. This role works closely with business leaders, business analysts, and key cross-functional partners including actuarial, data science, digital/IT, operations, and claims to advance divisional priorities. SSL underwrites both admitted and non-admitted business for General Liability, Automobile Liability, Workers Compensation, Property, Inland Marine, and Excess/Umbrella lines of business across multiple industry verticals, including but not limited to Contracting, Energy, Security, and Environmental.

What you will do: Business Consulting

• Partner with business stakeholders to understand business goals, operational priorities, financial objectives, service expectations, dependencies, and emerging needs.
• Assess operational, financial, workflow, service, user experience, market, and performance-related challenges to identify trends, issues, imbalances, friction points, risks, opportunities for improvement, and broader business opportunities.
• Conduct qualitative and quantitative analysis of business performance, portfolio results, workflow effectiveness, service levels, workload distribution, and stakeholder/user feedback.
• Analyze producer, broker, segment, platform, process, book-of-business, distribution relationship, operational model, and digital capability performance to evaluate effectiveness, profitability, adoption, and overall business impact.
• Evaluate broker, underwriter, stakeholder, and user experience to identify opportunities to improve ease of doing business, service experience, adoption, and overall satisfaction.
• Develop clear, actionable, data-informed recommendations to improve operational efficiency, business effectiveness, user experience, service outcomes, and profitability.
• Partner with stakeholders to define success measures, KPIs, reporting approaches, and expected business outcomes for strategic initiatives and operational improvement efforts.
• Present findings, market insights, tradeoffs, business impacts, solution hypotheses, and recommendations in a clear and business-friendly manner to support decision-making and prioritization.
• Monitor the impact of implemented changes and recommend additional actions or refinements based on results, feedback, and observed business outcomes.

Strategy & Planning

• Partner with business stakeholders and Digital Services teams to translate business goals, operational findings, strategic priorities, market insights, and improvement opportunities into actionable initiatives, initial solution hypotheses, analysis plans, and measurable outcomes.
• Serve as a liaison between assigned business unit stakeholders and Digital Services teams to ensure business context, priorities, dependencies, impacts, risks, and desired outcomes are clearly understood.
• Support roadmap planning activities, as required, by helping assess dependencies, sequencing considerations, business impacts, implementation considerations, delivery implications, and readiness needs.
• Convert current-state business process, workflow, system, and operational findings into planning inputs that support solution evaluation, prioritization, scope definition, and execution alignment.
• Collaborate with business, Digital Services, and IT stakeholders in planning and design activities for new applications, business capabilities, process improvements, and enhancements to existing systems.
• Participate in research of third-party software products, platforms, or services to support purchase, build, integration, or enhancement decisions in alignment with business needs.
• Help define initiative scope, objectives, assumptions, milestones, communication approaches, success measures, and planning considerations to support predictable outcomes and effective execution.
• Communicate business priorities, operational context, findings, risks, tradeoffs, and recommended approaches to Digital Services and delivery partners to support alignment and informed planning decisions.

Execution & Delivery

• Structure business priorities into initiative and execution plans and lead coordination across cross-functional teams through initiation, planning, execution, testing, deployment, and post-implementation support to support successful delivery and intended business outcomes.
• Collaborate with project teams to establish and manage timelines, milestones, dependencies, decision points, success measures, and status reporting.
• Track and manage risks, issues, dependencies, assumptions, and decisions, including probable causes, mitigation approaches, escalation needs, and viable solutions.
• Facilitate coordination across business, Digital Services, and IT teams to ensure alignment of scope, readiness, and delivery outcomes.
• Support the definition and documentation of business requirements, process flows, systems impacts, and operational considerations, as required, in partnership with business stakeholders and Business Analysts.
• Provide status updates, meeting notes, action logs, process documentation, diagrams, and related materials to support development, quality assurance, and business stakeholders.
• Coordinate testing activities for modified and new systems, including quality assurance, performance testing, user acceptance testing, and post-implementation validation.
• Monitor progress against scope, timeline, KPIs, business objectives, and expected business value; proactively escalate risks, issues, and outcome gaps to leadership as appropriate.
• Assist in change management activities, including stakeholder communication, readiness planning, training coordination, implementation planning, and adoption support for business and user-facing changes.
• Lead post-implementation reviews to evaluate delivery results and business impact, identify lessons learned, and recommend next steps, corrective actions, or continued improvement opportunities.

What you will bring to C&F:

• Bachelor’s degree and a minimum of 5 years of specialized experience.
• 8+ years of relevant experience in business analysis, strategic delivery, consulting, or related roles is
• Experience in P&C, Specialty, or Commercial Insurance is highly preferred.Experience with oversight and support for the planning, analysis, execution, and implementation of business initiatives, operational improvements, or technology-enabled solutions in support of strategic goals.
• Demonstrated ability to operate in ambiguous or loosely defined business situations, structure complex problems, synthesize information from multiple sources, and frame actionable analyses, initial solution hypotheses, recommendations, options, and tradeoffs.
• Demonstrated experience providing strategic business analysis, consultative problem-solving, business advisory support, and delivery coordination with business leaders and cross-functional partners.
• Advanced understanding of insurance workflows, systems, operational processes, Property & Casualty insurance operations, products, and distribution models, including Specialty, Commercial, and Excess & Surplus Lines business.
• Demonstrated ability to analyze business performance, portfolio results, operational effectiveness, workflow, service, broker/customer experience, and profitability data, and translate findings into clear, actionable recommendations.
• Proven ability to organize complex work into actionable plans, support execution across cross-functional teams, and manage risks, issues, dependencies, decisions, stakeholder communications, and escalation needs in a structured and timely manner.
• Strong communication, listening, facilitation, interpersonal, and stakeholder-management skills, with the ability to communicate effectively in both technical and user-friendly language.
• Demonstrated ability to influence, build trust, drive accountability, and maintain a strong partnership and service orientation across team-oriented, collaborative environments without formal authority.
• Highly self-motivated, logical, detail-oriented, and able to prioritize and execute tasks effectively in fast-moving or high-pressure environments.Strong understanding of business analysis practices, including requirements gathering, stakeholder alignment, user acceptance testing, implementation support, change management, stakeholder communication, and adoption planning is preferred.
• Familiarity with SDLC, Agile, Scrum, SAFe, Waterfall delivery methodologies, policy administration platforms, rating tools, broker/distributor systems, and analytics or BI tools is preferred.

#LI-MS

#LI-REMOTE

What C&F will bring to you

• Competitive compensation package
• Generous 401K employer match
• Employee Stock Purchase plan with employer matching
• Generous Paid Time Off
• Excellent benefits that go beyond health, dental & vision. Our programs are focused on your whole family’s wellness, including your physical, mental and financial wellbeing
• A core C&F tenet is supporting your career development, so we provide a wealth of ways for you to keep learning, which may include tuition reimbursement, industry-related certifications and professional training to keep you progressing on your chosen path
• A dynamic, ambitious, fun and exciting work environment
• We believe you do well by doing good and want to encourage a spirit of social and community responsibility, matching donation program, volunteer opportunities, and an employee-driven corporate giving program that lets you participate and support your community