Mark Flanagan

Following a move back to the UK for family reasons my contract was continued to work remotely for Canada Life in the UK. The role was originally as an Investment Business Analyst:

• this involved assisting in mapping the dealing processes in Visio in preparation to moving to a new Dealing System combining the onshore and offshore companies, I had also been part of this project in my previous role from a different angle however the project was put on hold.

My role was then amended to Associate Business Analyst where I worked on the following:

• Derivative project connected with new regulatory regulations
• Systems project identifying servers and therefore many internal applications that required to be updated.
• Version update for CAMRA the Investment recording system

This involved:

• Producing written documentation and visual slides to report data to influence key stakeholders.
• Applying strong analytical skills to translate business requirements into effective technical solutions.
• Documenting process flows and implementing requirements for functional improvements.
• Communicating with staff at all organisational levels to assess current systems.
• Analysing business processes, systems and data to identify opportunities for enhancement and efficiency.
• Producing Functional and Non-Functional Documents
• Working with both Waterfall and Agile methodologies

Unfortunately following an IT restructure many roles were made redundant including mine.

For 23 years I worked as the Senior Dealer in a very busy Dealing Team which was part of the Investment Department for Canada Life International (an offshore Life Assurance Company domiciled in the Isle of Man).

The role was varied and involved

• inputting, authorising and placing (execution only) deals in the market on behalf of our Policy Holders.
• I was an authorised signatory with a signing limit and deal authorisation limit of up to £5 million per investment and also authorised payments up to £250,000 per transaction.
• I was also tasked with resolving complicated queries, corrections and complaints as required that no one else could resolve.
• I dealt with Fund Managers, IFA's, Fund Advisers and Policy Holders on a daily basis. I offered a bespoke service over and above my role for a number of high net worth Policy Holders that acted as their own Fund Adviser, many of which I dealt with for over 20 years.
• I often Collated and sent company documents to satisfy AML requirements especially for new accounts or company relationships and often for every Hedge Fund Investment placed in the US, Cayman, Bermuda etc.

My role also often branched out into project work due the time I had been with the company along with my extensive knowledge of the in house dealing system and my attention to detail e.g.

• I was often involved with system testing following changes and enhancements to the dealing system many of which have been put forward by myself to improve efficiency and to reduce errors.
• I worked on a project to connect Calastone, a straight through processing dealing platform to our dealing system. Through my knowledge and investigations why the previous dealing platform did not work as we hoped and following a meeting with the new provider I was able to explain to the project team, business analysts and programmers what we needed to do to make it a success. I was then involved with the testing and implementation.
• I was the Investment Department representative in a small team working on a three month project to integrate our newly acquired Irish company with the Isle of Man. This took me outside my comfort zone as we had to cover every aspect of the Life Assurance process from Call Handling to New Business to Dealing to Claims with only one visit to the company and two weeks training.
• I was also the Dealing representitive for other regulation changes such as GDPR and FATCA.

Upon leaving school I worked as an Apprentice Avionics Engineer learning how to service and test the electrical systems on planes. Unfortunately the engineering side of the company was sold part way through my apprenticeship and the Manchester hangar was closed making 300 people redundant.

This prompted my decision to go to college to study A-levels and then to University to gain my degree.