Odyssey Reinsurance Company (OdysseyRe) has appointed Philip Klecan (pictured) as chief agent in Canada, effective March 27.
Klecan will act as the branch’s senior representative, leading broker and client engagement and representing OdysseyRe with regulators and industry bodies in Canada. He will continue to oversee Canadian underwriting strategy while taking on a broader external‑facing role.
Klecan joined OdysseyRe in 2024 as chief underwriting officer for Canadian operations, bringing more than two decades of insurance and reinsurance experience. He most recently led Hannover Re’s property and casualty treaty portfolio in Canada. That role gave him direct visibility across personal and commercial lines, from personal property and auto to commercial general liability, specialty, and multiline programs.
He succeeds long‑time chief agent Jean‑Raymond (JR) Kingsley, who is retiring after 15 years with the company.
“Canada is an important market to us, and we’re proud of the long-term relationships with our clients and brokers that extend back decades,” said Brian Quinn, CEO of North America at OdysseyRe. “Over the past two years, Phil has spent a great deal of time familiarizing himself with our business. We’re delighted to see him at the helm and are grateful to JR for ensuring such a smooth transition.”
The leadership shift comes against a backdrop of tighter global reinsurance capacity and heightened scrutiny of risk accumulation, particularly around natural catastrophe, casualty severity, and specialty lines.
In Canada, primary carriers have faced a series of large weather‑related loss years over the past decade, including severe flooding, hail, convective storms, and wildfire seasons that have pushed annual insured catastrophe losses into the multi‑billion‑dollar range. Those events have fed directly into reinsurance renewals, with reinsurers pressing for higher retentions, more disciplined aggregates, and improved data quality on secondary perils.
At the same time, OSFI’s evolving capital and risk management expectations, including its climate‑risk guideline and continued focus on catastrophe risk and reinsurance dependency, are encouraging cedants to rethink how they balance retention, reinsurance protection, and capital buffers.
In that environment, having a chief agent with a technical treaty background and existing relationships across the Canadian carrier landscape is significant for brokers and cedants. Klecan’s Hannover Re experience means he has seen the Canadian market from another major global reinsurer’s vantage point, and will be familiar with both buyer expectations and competitor positioning.
OdysseyRe, part of Fairfax Financial Holdings, is a multi‑line reinsurer writing property, casualty, and specialty business globally, with Canada representing one of its established franchises. The company has historically been active across standard property and casualty treaties, as well as agriculture and selected specialty segments.
In recent renewal seasons, global players like OdysseyRe have had to balance improved pricing and terms on property catastrophe and certain casualty lines with tighter capital, retrocession costs, and competing demands from the US, Europe, and Asia. That has translated into a more selective appetite at some reinsurers, with sharper differentiation between well‑performing books with strong data and risk management, and portfolios seen as under‑priced or volatility‑heavy.
OdysseyRe’s decision to elevate its Canadian CUO to chief agent suggests it wants local leadership that can combine underwriting discipline with relationship management, rather than a purely sales‑driven presence.
