Wawanesa has announced the promotion of a long-term employee to its executive leadership team, and a new vice president appointment.
Maja Dos Santos (pictured, left) joined the executive leadership team as senior vice president and chief risk officer, while Julia Vul (pictured, right) has been appointed vice president, corporate actuarial and appointed actuary for Wawanesa Mutual.
Dos Santos joined Wawanesa in 2003 and has held roles of increasing responsibility across actuarial functions and enterprise risk management. Meanwhile, Vul has more than 20 years of actuarial and insurance industry experience.
"Their appointments reflect the strong leadership, technical expertise and talent we're fortunate to have within Wawanesa," the company said, a statement that understates the weight both roles now carry given the regulatory, catastrophe, and talent pressures converging on the insurer at once.
Vul's appointment as appointed actuary places her in a position carrying specific statutory weight under Canadian federal insurance regulation.
The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions requires every federally regulated insurer to designate an Appointed Actuary responsible for the valuation of policy liabilities and actuarial components of the regulatory capital test, a role OSFI has described as central to assessing an insurer's overall safety and soundness.
That regulatory framework is itself in flux: OSFI's revised Minimum Capital Test Guideline took effect January 1, 2026, simplifying several capital calculation requirements, while changes to Guideline E-15 eliminating the longstanding requirement for peer review of an Appointed Actuary's work take effect January 1, 2027.
For someone newly appointed to the role, that shifting compliance landscape, layered on top of ongoing IFRS 17 implementation considerations, adds complexity to an already technically demanding role.
That same regulatory backdrop has direct implications for the risk function Dos Santos now leads, since enterprise risk and actuarial valuation increasingly intersect under OSFI's evolving capital framework.
The appointments land at a moment when both roles carry heightened significance for the mutual insurer. Wawanesa has been notably active on the catastrophe and climate resilience front in recent months.
In June 2026, the company partnered with Climative to pilot an AI-powered tool offering Canadians personalized wildfire risk scores and mitigation recommendations, becoming the first Canadian insurer to introduce that type of resource to its members. The insurer has also invested more than $660,000 in wildfire prevention projects across 46 communities through its Community Wildfire Prevention Grants program, now in its fourth year and developed in partnership with FireSmart Canada and the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction.
That focus reflects a broader industry reality. Severe weather caused more than $2.4 billion in insured damage across Canada in 2025, the tenth-costliest year on record, following a 2024 in which insured losses surpassed $8 billion for the first time in Canadian history. Annual insured losses from catastrophic weather and wildfires totaled $37 billion between 2016 and 2025, nearly triple the previous decade's total, underscoring why Wawanesa's catastrophe risk initiatives now sit squarely within Dos Santos's enterprise risk mandate.
Beyond the immediate regulatory and catastrophe pressures, the appointments arrive against the backdrop of a tightening Canadian actuarial labor market.
Industry recruiters have flagged a widening gap between retiring senior actuaries and the smaller cohort of newly credentialed professionals entering the field, noting that the path from an undergraduate actuarial science degree to Fellowship typically takes seven to 10 years of examinations and supervised practice, a pipeline that cannot be accelerated to meet near-term succession needs.
That dynamic makes the internal promotion of two long-tenured, dual-designated Fellows, both holding credentials from the Canadian Institute of Actuaries and the Casualty Actuarial Society, a notable example of succession planning at a moment when Canadian insurers more broadly are competing for a shrinking pool of senior actuarial talent.
Dos Santos's 22 years with the company in particular reflects exactly the kind of internally developed expertise the industry is now struggling to replace at scale.
The leadership changes also come as Wawanesa works through a significant corporate transaction that will test both new appointees almost immediately.
In March 2026, Wawanesa entered into an agreement to acquire Everest Insurance Company of Canada, the Canadian retail insurance operations of Everest Group, bringing a portfolio of specialty commercial products including cyber, accident and health, aviation, marine, and professional liability coverage into Wawanesa's offerings. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, subject to regulatory approval from the Minister of Finance and clearance under the Competition Act.
Integrating a specialty commercial book with materially different risk characteristics than Wawanesa's traditional personal lines and farm insurance business will be a substantial undertaking for both the risk and actuarial functions, meaning Dos Santos and Vul will be working closely together from day one on a single, defining strategic priority.
