“I was immediately engrossed in planning, budgeting, building a team and evaluating claims skillset, and learning about PartnerRe’s business, when the terrorist events of September 11, 2001 rocked my world.”
Name: Carol Ann O’Dea
Company: AXIS Re Job:
Executive vice president, chief claims officer
Timeline: 2011—Executive vice president, chief claims officer, AXIS Re 2001—Senior vice president, director of claims, PartnerRe
Carol Ann O’Dea is responsible for the AXIS Re claims department worldwide, with operations in the US, Bermuda and Zurich. After starting her career as an attorney in private practice, O’Dea
moved in-house after eight years into the role of claims attorney at Executive Risk Management Associates in the early 1990s. After learning the business, she moved from primary insurance to reinsurance at NAC Reinsurance and XL company. She has more than 25 years of reinsurance, insurance and law experience and has worked exclusively in the reinsurance industry for the last 15 years. Prior to joining AXIS, O’Dea was director of claims at PartnerRe
for 10 years where she was responsible for building out the US claims team to support the company’s property and casualty reinsurance business. She sees the claims role in reinsurance as a strategic position, aligned with the business, underwriting, actuarial and finance sectors.
Why did you choose to work in this industry initially? Why did I choose to work in the insurance industry? It was not so much a choice to choose the industry as the industry found me! In the early days of my career I was in private practice working at a New York City law firm that specialised in insurance coverage work. My developed expertise was in the area of D&O (Directors and Officers) liability and securities class actions. My marriage and a life-work-balance decision with two young children and a third on its way landed me at Executive Risk, a specialised D&O insurance company. It was an excellent career decision.
What has been the highlight of your career so far? I have had many highlights along the way. And as I think about
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those exhilarating highlights, they were in most instances, some of my greatest career challenges. Early September 2001, I had just joined PartnerRe to build out the PartnerRe US Claims operation. It was definitely a highlight of my career. I was immediately engrossed in planning, budgeting, building a team and evaluating claims skillset, and learning about PartnerRe’s business, when the terrorist events of September 11, 2001 rocked my world. The insurance industry was hit hard by the events of that day.
Beyond the devastating personal toll of lost friends and colleagues, the insurance losses were huge and I was faced with quickly coming to terms with all of PartnerRe’s exposures and insurance coverages in order to promptly and effectively respond to our client’s needs. This was a professional challenge. In June 2011, I joined AXIS Re in the role of chief claims officer,
responsible for aligning the claims organisation for the global platform of the company, a strategic position to be aligned with the business, underwriting, actuarial and finance. Again, a very exciting opportunity and a highlight of my career, however, with organisational change come all sorts of challenges, push back and political plays. Like at PartnerRe, I began my career at AXIS looking at some
of the industry’s most recent largest loss events, but this time events that occurred shortly before my arrival at AXIS and as far away from New York as possible, the devastating earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand. These losses don’t keep me awake at night, but once I am awake, they certainly engage my mind!
If you had chosen a different profession/career path, what would it have been? Was choosing a different career or professional path ever an option? That’s really hard to answer, since I am very pleased with the direction of my career, however, I did say, way back when I first got out of law school, “If I had known that you could major in any field and still go to law school, I probably would have majored in engineering.” That might have dramatically changed the direction of my career. However I had my heart set on law school from the time I was in
high school. I wasn’t interested in being Perry Mason, but the logical reasoning, drawing on skills of analysing, evaluating, constructing and presenting well supported and reasoned solutions, appealed to me. I do believe that I am exactly where I should be!
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