Ryan Specialty has appointed Heather Jamieson (pictured) as president of Stewart Specialty Risk Underwriting (SSRU), effective immediately.
Jamieson succeeds Stephen Stewart, who founded the business in 2016. Stewart will remain CEO of Ryan Specialty Canada through the end of 2026, at which point Jamieson will take over that role too, effective Jan. 1, 2027.
"Since founding SSRU in 2016, my goal has been to build the company into what it has become today, a leading underwriter of complex commercial property and casualty business in Canada," Stewart said. "I believe the time is right for the next generation of leadership to guide the business forward." Miles Wuller, CEO of Ryan Specialty Underwriting Managers, called the move "a thoughtful and natural succession plan."
Jamieson is not new to SSRU. She has served as the firm's senior vice president of property and has worked alongside Stewart since 2019.
That internal continuity is significant given what SSRU actually underwrites - severity-driven, high-hazard risk in natural resources, mining, industrial operations, energy, manufacturing and specialty construction, lines where broker and insurer trading relationships built over years matter as much as underwriting capacity itself.
Promoting from within SSRU's existing leadership, rather than bringing in an outside executive, signals Ryan Specialty is prioritizing exactly that kind of relationship continuity through the transition.
The announcement understated the scale of what Jamieson is actually being positioned to run.
Ryan Specialty consolidated seven separate Canadian managing general underwriting businesses, namely, Alive Risk, Global Special Risks, PERse, Ryan Transactional Risk, SSRU, Technical Risk Underwriters and Trident Marine Managers, under a single new holding company, Ryan Specialty Canada Limited, with Stewart named its first CEO earlier this year.
When Jamieson takes over as CEO on January 1, 2027, she won't just be running SSRU's high-hazard property and casualty book; she'll be overseeing that entire consolidated platform spanning transactional risk, marine, power and energy, and technical risk underwriting alongside SSRU's core specialty. Her SSRU presidency is best understood as the first, most visible step in a broader executive transition Ryan Specialty has been building toward since it completed that Canadian amalgamation.
For brokers working with SSRU on natural resources, energy, mining or industrial risk specifically, this transition is designed to be operationally invisible in the near term. Stewart will remain involved through year-end, and Jamieson has already worked directly with the same broker and insurer trading partners in her prior SVP role.
The more relevant signal for brokers across Ryan Specialty's broader Canadian platform is that leadership across all seven consolidated MGU units will converge under a single CEO in 2027 who came up specifically through the specialty property underwriting side of the business, a background that could shape how Ryan Specialty Canada balances investment and strategic priority across its different underwriting units once that consolidation is complete.
