Senior Business Analyst – Group Ben...

Manulife, a premier international financial services provider, is actively seeking a Senior Business Analyst to join its dynamic Group Benefits Operations team in Toronto, Ontario. This pivotal role is instrumental in driving transformational change, optimizing operational capabilities, and delivering exceptional solutions for both clients and internal stakeholders. The Senior Business Analyst will achieve this through close collaboration with diverse partners, translating complex business needs into precise and actionable requirements.

Key responsibilities include acting as a subject matter expert, analyzing stakeholder requirements, and assessing operational impacts. The role demands a structured, data-driven approach to dissecting complex challenges, investigating system and process issues to pinpoint root causes and improvement opportunities, and meticulously translating business needs into clear requirements for development and configuration, ensuring rigorous testing.

A forward-thinking mindset is essential, with a focus on staying abreast of emerging technologies like automation, analytics, and AI, and exploring their potential to modernize processes and elevate client and operational outcomes. The Senior Business Analyst will identify opportunities to leverage new tools and techniques to streamline workflows and redesign operational procedures. Collaboration with IT and business partners to assess, pilot, and implement new technology solutions is also a core function. Utilizing data for assumption validation, impact modeling, and decision support, alongside analyzing datasets, reports, and process metrics to formulate recommendations, will be crucial. Insights will be presented compellingly to drive effective action.

The role also encompasses leading business readiness planning to ensure operational teams are fully prepared for upcoming changes, working closely with training, documentation, and operational staff to manage all impacts. Post-implementation stabilization and embedding changes into daily operations are key. Building robust relationships with operational leaders, implementation partners, project teams, and IT is paramount. Championing the client, member, and operational experience throughout solution design, and supporting alignment on priorities, scope, timelines, and outcomes are also expected.

Furthermore, the Senior Business Analyst will lead or support user acceptance testing (UAT), including test case creation, execution, and production validation, ensuring issues are triaged and resolved before deployment, and confirming solutions meet requirements. Identifying opportunities to strengthen processes and enhance operational efficiency, applying methodologies such as Lean, Six Sigma, and structured problem-solving, and proposing tactical and long-term improvements to support transformation goals are integral to the role.