Senior Strategy & Performance Analyst

First Chicago is hiring a Senior Strategy & Performance Analyst to find out why results move and help fix what drives them. Claims is the primary focus.

You will investigate adverse trends and deviations from KPIs, work with business leaders to build practical corrective actions, and track those actions to measured results. This is a root-cause and follow-through role. It is not dashboard production, budgeting, forecasting, or ownership of departmental operations.

You will report to the Chief Accounting Officer & Treasurer and work closely with Financial Planning & Analysis, Accounting, department leadership, and Product & Actuarial. The role will be supported by a dedicated data analyst.

• →Review KPI reports, financial results, operating metrics, and strategic milestones; identify exceptions, emerging risks, and significant deviations from targets.
• →Investigate underlying causes by state, carrier, program, product, distribution channel, department, and vendor, working directly in the data lake and source systems; separate temporary fluctuations from persistent problems.
• →Validate findings with department leaders and subject-matter experts; challenge assumptions constructively and separate observed facts from hypotheses.
• →Develop corrective-action plans with accountable department heads, with clear owners, timelines, milestones, and success measures.
• →Identify opportunities to reduce costs, improve profitability, optimize resources, and increase productivity; assess return on investment in coordination with Accounting.
• →Maintain a central tracker of approved actions; monitor progress and measured results, assess whether improvements hold, and escalate unresolved issues.
• →Coordinate cross-functional analysis and dependencies without assuming authority over departmental decisions or implementation.
• →Prepare concise monthly executive summaries covering priority exceptions, confirmed causes, recommended actions, owners, progress, quantified benefits, and open risks.
• →Align with enterprise KPI definitions; use existing reports where they are timely and sufficient, and work with the data analyst to build supplemental data and reports where they are not.

• Claims (primary): Claim severity and frequency, calendar and accident year loss ratios, loss development trends, handling trends, cycle times, attorney representation, litigation, complaint ratios and types, vendor costs, loss adjustment expenses, and state/program variances.
• Personal Lines Underwriting (secondary): Retention, loss ratio and profitability trends, new-business quality, cancellations, underwriting exceptions, producer/program results, cost-benefit of underwriting reports, and operational efficiency.
• Commercial Lines Underwriting (secondary): Growth and profitability against plan, submission-to-bind conversion, portfolio concentration, retention, underwriting discipline, and program performance.
• Marketing (secondary): Producer and channel productivity, campaign effectiveness, acquisition costs, conversion, distribution performance, and return on marketing investment.
• Product & Actuarial (secondary): Product/program profitability, actual-versus-expected performance, rate-change effectiveness, emerging portfolio risks, and initiative outcomes, using analyses produced by Actuarial.

Secondary areas are addressed as assigned. The analyst supports technical owners; actuarial judgments, underwriting decisions, and Claims operations remain with their respective departments.

• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Business, Economics, Analytics, Insurance, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Five or more years of relevant experience in P&C insurance, insurance operations, business performance analysis, strategic planning, or a related field. P&C Claims experience strongly preferred.
• In-depth knowledge of P&C Claims operations and metrics; working knowledge of Underwriting, Product/Actuarial, and distribution. Cross-functional insurance experience strongly preferred.
• Strong analytical, financial, and problem-solving skills; ability to connect operational drivers to business results and evaluate cost-benefit and ROI.
• Excellent executive communication, facilitation, and judgment; ability to influence without direct authority.
• Advanced Excel; proficiency with SQL and BI/data visualization tools.

Timely, credible root-cause findings; recommendations adopted by business owners; completion of agreed corrective actions; cost savings or operational benefits verified against a documented baseline; sustained improvement in targeted KPIs; and clear, decision-useful executive reporting. Success is not measured by the volume of dashboards or reports produced.