Senior Associate - Illustrations Business Analyst

About the role

New York Life Insurance (NYL) is seeking a highly motivated and detail-oriented Business Analyst to join our high-performing team focused on continually improving our technology ecosystem and transforming our business processing capabilities that support our institutional clients in an industry-leading business unit, Institutional Life (IL).

Responsibilities

• Partner closely with the Sales organization, New Business, Product Owners, technical teams, third-party vendors, and business stakeholders to understand business objectives and translate them into technology solutions.
• Develop deep business knowledge of Institutional Life products, sales processes, and customer needs to identify opportunities to enhance the illustration experience.
• Partner with Technical and Business Product Owners by providing Illustration business expertise, process knowledge, and stakeholder input to support the development and validation of business and functional requirements, acceptance criteria, process flows, and business rules.
• Support backlog refinement activities by clarifying business needs, answering functional questions, validating requirements with stakeholders, and helping ensure work items are understood and ready for delivery.
• Facilitate requirements workshops, stakeholder and vendor meetings, and solution discussions to drive alignment across business and technology teams.
• Analyze existing business processes, system capabilities, and data flows to identify opportunities to improve efficiency, accuracy, scalability, and the overall user experience.
• Partner with development teams and third-party vendors to ensure solutions meet documented business requirements and applicable operational and regulatory standards.
• Create and maintain test data and testing documentation while partnering with business stakeholders and developers to validate delivered functionality and support release readiness.
• Support Illustration platforms in production by investigating business and system issues, partnering with technical teams and vendors to resolve defects, validating fixes, and ensuring business needs are met following implementation.
• Ensure business and technical documentation remains accurate, complete, and aligned with delivered functionality.
• Support continuous improvement initiatives by identifying opportunities to enhance business processes, delivery practices, and Illustration platform capabilities.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Information Systems, Computer Science, or a related field, or equivalent work experience.
• 5+ years of Business Analyst experience supporting technology solutions, preferably within the life insurance or financial services industry.
• Experience partnering directly with Sales organizations and business stakeholders to understand business needs and deliver technology solutions that improve business outcomes.
• Experience gathering, documenting, and validating business and functional requirements, user stories, process flows, and acceptance criteria.
• Strong understanding of Agile methodologies and experience working within a SAFe Agile delivery framework.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively with Product Owners, development vendors, and business stakeholders throughout the software development lifecycle.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, facilitation, and organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple priorities.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to communicate complex concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Hands-on experience developing test cases and executing system, integration, regression, and user acceptance testing activities.
• Strong working knowledge of Microsoft Office applications, including advanced Excel skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with life insurance illustration platforms and supporting Illustration business processes.
• Knowledge of Individual or Institutional Life Insurance products, including Universal Life (UL), Variable Universal Life (VUL), COLI/BOLI, and advanced market solutions.
• Working knowledge of life insurance illustration regulations, including IRC 7702, IRC 7702A, and applicable illustration compliance requirements.
• Experience understanding downstream data integrations and understanding data flows associated with illustration platforms.
• Exposure to test automation tools, AI-assisted testing capabilities, or other productivity technologies that improve test coverage, reduce manual effort, and increase delivery efficiency.
• Experience working with third-party software vendors in a hybrid delivery model.
• Passion for continuous improvement with a demonstrated ability to simplify business processes and drive operational efficiencies.