Markel Insurance, the insurance operations within Markel Group, has announced the appointment of Marc Copland (pictured) as vice president, product line leader -- Property, effective immediately.
Copland steps into the newly created property product line leadership role, focused on shaping and scaling Markel Canada's property portfolio.
Working with technical specialists and underwriting teams, his priority will be developing property products and specialist capabilities for customers while making it easier for brokers to trade with Markel Canada. That includes applying AI, data and analytics, and modern underwriting technology to sharpen decision-making and free underwriters to focus on the complex risks where specialist judgment matters most.
Cliff Laidlaw, senior vice president, underwriting at Markel Canada, said: "Marc is a terrific addition to our Canadian leadership team. His technical depth in complex property risk and track record of building and leading high-performing underwriting teams brings exactly the kind of expertise we need as we sharpen our focus on Property and continue building Markel Canada into a leading specialty insurer."
Copland brings two decades of insurance experience, including 16 years underwriting complex technical property risks across primary insurance and reinsurance, and seven years leading underwriting teams. He joins from Definity (Economical), where, as manager, Complex Middle Market, he built a new product line from scratch, including the team, book, guidelines, wordings and workflows.
Before Definity, Copland spent close to a decade at Munich Re Canada underwriting large risk-managed accounts across mining, energy, heavy industry, manufacturing and realty, as well as power and course of construction risks.
The appointment comes as Canadian property insurers contend with an increasingly volatile catastrophe backdrop. Insured losses from severe weather in Canada hit a record $8.5 billion in 2024, according to Insurance Bureau of Canada data compiled by CatIQ, nearly triple the 2023 total and well above the previous record of $6.2 billion set in 2016. Losses eased to $2.4 billion in 2025, the tenth-costliest year on record, but insured wildfire losses alone have risen more than 1,000% over the past decade. AM Best's Canada property and casualty market segment report says signs of a hard market in catastrophe-exposed property have continued through 2025 and are expected to persist into 2026, even as pricing softens elsewhere in the book.
That domestic picture differs from the global reinsurance market. Markel's 2026 trends outlook, authored by Guenter Kryszon, the company's chief underwriting officer for the US and Bermuda, points to softening conditions globally, with property-catastrophe reinsurance now in a buyer's market and rate reductions of 10% to 15% following a surge of capital into the sector. Kryszon's commentary reflects the US and Bermuda market rather than Canada specifically, but the broader divergence, firm primary property pricing in Canada's cat-exposed regions even as global reinsurance capacity gets cheaper, is reshaping how specialty property books are underwritten and priced heading into next year.
The Copland hire also continues a pattern of specialty investment at Markel Canada, which has recently added dedicated construction underwriting leadership and partnered with hyperexponential to build AI-driven rating tools for its Canadian environmental line. Markel Canada, headquartered in Toronto, underwrites on behalf of Markel Syndicate 3000 at Lloyd's as part of Markel International Services Limited.
