Fixed Income: senior analyst progression

Really depends on the shop. At the largest FI places, they generally have a junior for every senior (I know this to be true at Fidelity and PGIM, not sure if there's any others), so this structure will naturally be more like the sell-side and rely heavily on turnover. Most other large/mid-sized will have 1-3 juniors across the group (IG, HY, EM, SP, and some have Loans separately). In this case, they generally are more apt to keep juniors they like around by throwing you a sector and seeing what you can do, but at the end of the day there's a budget so will either depend on growth or turnover to move up. But IMO its a lot easier to make upward progression on the FI side than the equity side. Additionally, there's a lot of smaller funds and CLOs etc that you could always move to after 2-4 years, where you will likely be given more responsibility, so you always have the ability to lateral.

As for your current role, I'd imagine you should have too much of an issue given its a total return focused strategy and assuming they take on some risk. Some of the best senior analysts I have worked with (HY at top AM) got their start on the insurance side. At the end of the day you'll be doing the same job as any other junior analyst, its just that the core investment objectives are a little different.