Senior Resilience Analyst - Testing (SRAT)
Application Deadline: 15 November 2026
Department: Risk and Compliance
Employment Type: Permanent - Full Time
Location: London UK
Reporting To: Third Party & Business Resilience Senior Manager
Description
The role of the Senior Resilience Analyst (Testing) will help shape and deliver Asta’s Business Continuity Management (BCM) and resilience testing programme across its own operations and managed syndicates.
The person will own the BCM lifecycle and develop an integrated multi-year testing strategy, leading increasingly sophisticated exercises that assess whether Important Business Services (IBSs) can remain within approved impact tolerances during severe-but-plausible disruption. Additionally, the role will be responsible for turning test findings into practical improvements through clear evidence, lessons learned and retesting.
If successful, you will bring together business impact analyses (BIAs), crisis and major incident plans, recovery runbooks and market exercises, aligned with ongoing client oversight, third-party risk management and operational resilience arrangements.
Key Responsibilities
- Own the BCM lifecycle: coordinate and challenge BIAs; maintain crisis and major incident plans, continuity plans and recovery runbooks; align recovery priorities and dependencies with IBS mapping and approved tolerances. Secure appropriate validation and approvals and keep plans and supporting documentation current following material change, incidents and exercises.
- Develop, secure approval for and maintain an integrated multi-year test strategy and annual delivery plan, proportionate to service risk, scale, maturity, complexity and change. Ensure the testing programme provides appropriate coverage of important business services across Asta and managed syndicates.
- Identify and escalate current assurance gaps, with conclusions based on completed testing rather than planned activity.
- Design and lead severe-but-plausible scenarios informed by mapping, vulnerabilities, incidents and emerging threats. Build increasingly sophisticated simulations using staged scenario developments and integrated business, technology and third-party recovery tests, with controlled live testing where appropriate and approved. Set clear objectives, assumptions, success criteria and evidence requirements. Assess primary impact tolerances and relevant approved sub-tolerances, keeping these distinct from recovery targets.
- Coordinate and facilitate end-to-end exercises with relevant internal and external participants. Test crisis activation, escalation, decision-making, workarounds, recovery, data integrity and internal/external communications. Coordinate participation in Lloyd’s and wider market exercises and assess central-service and shared-dependency disruption.
- Coordinate the business continuity elements of risk-based material outsourcing exercises. Technical supplier-testing assurance remains with IT, including challenge of methodologies, scenario coverage and recovery evidence. Incorporate the findings into service-level assessments against approved impact tolerances and follow-up actions.
- Set test evidence standards and ensure exercise records are complete, reliable and traceable. Clearly report outcomes, performance against tolerances, assumptions, limitations and vulnerabilities, distinguishing demonstrated recovery capability from untested assumptions
- Lead lessons learned after exercises and relevant incidents; agree actions, responsibilities and completion dates, track remediation, and escalate overdue actions and material weaknesses. Plan and deliver retesting to validate closure, update BCM plans, supporting documentation and the test strategy, and measure coverage, evidence quality, action closure, retest outcomes and delivery predictability
Skills, Knowledge & Expertise
- Demonstrable experience owning and delivering BCM and operational resilience testing in a regulated financial services environment, including BIAs, continuity planning and recovery priorities.
- Practical expertise in crisis and major incident management, recovery runbooks, business workarounds, communications testing and integration with technology disaster recovery and cyber response.
- Working knowledge of third-party dependencies, material outsourcing continuity testing and concentration risks, with the ability to incorporate technical supplier-assurance findings into business continuity exercises and service-level assessments.
- Proven capability in multi-year test strategy, severe-but-plausible scenario design, staged scenario developments, simulation and exercise facilitation, with proportionate progression beyond desktop walkthroughs.
- Practical understanding of UK operational resilience testing requirements.
- Detailed knowledge of the relevant PRA, FCA and Lloyd’s frameworks, including regulatory reporting readiness, is desirable.
- Understanding of the Lloyd’s market, managing agent and syndicate operating models, central-service dependencies and market-wide exercises (desirable).
- Relevant BCM or resilience professional qualification, such as CBCI or equivalent, or equivalent demonstrable practical experience. Additional training in exercise design and facilitation is desirable.
- Strong evidence analysis and assurance skills, including assessment against impact tolerances, vulnerability identification, lessons learned, remediation tracking and retesting to validate closure.
- Strong stakeholder leadership and collaboration, able to coordinate diverse exercise participants while maintaining clear responsibilities and constructive challenge.
- Confident exercise facilitation and clear written and verbal communication, including concise reporting of outcomes, limitations and decisions for senior management and governance forums.
- Strong analytical judgement and attention to evidence, able to challenge assumptions, connect dependencies and vulnerabilities, and distinguish demonstrated capability from unsupported assurance.
- Independent programme planning and delivery, able to prioritise competing demands, manage exercise resources and deadlines, and escalate capacity constraints and material risks promptly.
- Adaptable, calm and practical under disruption, with a continuous-improvement approach to increasingly sophisticated testing and sustainable BCM delivery.
Why Asta?
At Asta, you’ll enjoy a market-leading benefits package that puts your wellbeing, career development and financial future first. We combine flexible working, strong family-friendly policies and exceptional rewards to create a supportive, inclusive and high-performing workplace.
Our benefits include:Work-life balance you can rely on
- 35-hour working week with hybrid and flexible working
- Generous holiday allowance that increases with service
Your health & wellbeing covered
- Private medical insurance with virtual GP access
- Annual health screening, dental cover and eye care
- Subsidised gym or sports club membership
Support for you and your family
- Enhanced maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental pay
Rewarding your contribution
- Highly competitive pension with up to 13% employer contribution
- Life assurance and income protection
- Discretionary annual bonus scheme
- Interest-free season ticket loan and salary sacrifice schemes
