Application Support Specialist

About Africa Specialty Risks

Africa Specialty Risks (ASR) focuses on enabling sustainable economic progress by addressing unmet insurance demands. The company offers expert underwriting knowledge, a vast distribution network, and access to global capital, operating from its base in Africa with offices throughout the continent and the Middle East. ASR leverages regional insights, data expertise, and technical skills to assist capital partners expanding in emerging markets. It sustains risk participation through entities in Bermuda, Mauritius, and Syndicate 2454 at Lloyd's, aiming to boost business growth via customized services and innovative insurance solutions.

Role Overview

The Application Support Specialist provides both technical and functional assistance for ASR's software, platforms, and business applications. The primary objective is to ensure effective support for customers, internal users, and stakeholders by promptly resolving issues, optimizing performance, and enhancing overall user satisfaction. This role involves collaborating with implementation teams and business owners to prioritize and deliver product functionalities aligned with organizational goals, troubleshooting problems, documenting processes, and improving system capabilities.

Key Responsibilities

• Deliver first-level application support for incidents and service requests including user onboarding/offboarding, managing account closures, passwords, and general queries.
• Diagnose and resolve technical and functional issues ensuring clear communication through email, chat, or ticketing platforms.
• Escalate complex problems to senior support, development, or vendor resources when necessary.
• Continuously monitor application performance, integration points, and data flows, identifying recurrent issues and collaborating to implement long-term fixes.
• Assist with application updates, patches, and validating software releases.
• Manage incident tickets by logging, tracking, documenting issues, maintaining SLA adherence, and closing tickets with detailed root causes.
• Create and maintain troubleshooting documentation, FAQs, and knowledge base materials; conduct training sessions for both internal teams and end users.
• Serve as the principal liaison between ASR business units and IT teams/vendors, gathering requirements, managing expectations, providing updates, resolving issues, and prioritizing competing requests.
• Collaborate with IT Development, QA, Data Engineering, Business Intelligence, and Infrastructure teams to validate requirements and implement solution modifications.
• Offer feedback to improve application functionality and user experience; participate in Application Testing, User Acceptance Testing (UAT), and Production Release procedures.

Required Qualifications and Experience

• Demonstrated experience supporting financial applications including General Ledger, Technical Ledger, and journal postings.
• Bachelor’s degree in IT, Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent qualifications.
• Between 1 to 3+ years of experience in supporting technical, application, or solution-based services.
• Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills.
• Knowledge of APIs, SQL databases, cloud technologies, and enterprise software applications.
• Practical experience with ticketing and support management systems.
• Outstanding communication skills combined with a strong customer service orientation.

Preferred Skills and Certifications

• Understanding of ITIL frameworks and best practices.
• Experience supporting SaaS platforms or enterprise solutions such as ERP, CRM, or HRIS.
• Professional certifications like ITIL Foundation, Microsoft, AWS, or equivalents.

Key Personal Competencies

• Effective problem-solving and analytical thinking abilities.
• Meticulous attention to detail.
• Curiosity for technology and drive to continuously learn.
• Strong team collaboration skills.
• Proficient in managing time and prioritizing tasks.