New Hires Expand GuideOne National’s Specialty Team WEST DES MOINES, IA (Dec. 18, 2019) – GuideOne National Insurance Company, a Specialty insurance subsidiary of GuideOne Mutual Insurance Company, hired four individuals to join the emerging infrastructure, construction and energy specialty teams in December 2019. With over 45 combined years of industry experience, the new hires come alongside Mark Groenheide, Senior Vice President, Specialty, to grow business in specialty markets. The hiring of these team members brought international talent to GuideOne’s corporate headquarters, located in West Des Moines, Iowa. “Specialty involves more unique, complex risks. It’s important to have underwriters who understand what they are writing and the risks associated. We are committed to bringing in best-in-class underwriting and engineering talent, with a demonstrated record of success,” said Jessica Snyder, GuideOne President and Chief Executive Officer. The onboarding of this talent laid the foundation of an exceptionally qualified, specialized workforce for GuideOne National. “We hired demonstrated experts,” Groenheide said. “We are doing business in a hard market, and we’re going to compete on knowledge, not price.” Appointed as Head of Risk Engineering, Nadir Durrani came to GuideOne with more than 20 years of risk engineering and loss control experience working for major insurance carriers such as AIG, Star Companies, Chubb and ICAT(Marsh). Durrani will lead a team of risk engineers, manage third party service providers and develop engineering guidelines to support a profitable book of business for GuideOne. GuideOne’s energy and mining efforts will be led by Jason Rollins, Head of Energy and Mining, Senior Specialty Underwriter. Rollins’ specialty lines experience includes over ten years of underwriting for international companies including Alesco, Marsh and IMIU. He helped build the business infrastructure of Torus Insurance, a start-up global specialty insurer, and will use the knowledge he gained to develop GuideOne’s energy underwriting team. Also among the new hires is local expert Jessica Whiton, who joined the specialty team as Head of Infrastructure, Senior Specialty Underwriter. Whiton previously worked at EMC Insurance, Des Moines, IA, as a corporate underwriting analyst and has over five years of commercial underwriting experience. In her new role at GuideOne, Whiton will be responsible for evaluating risks and establishing a robust portfolio. Neeraj Jeswani, Underwriting Actuarial Analyst, brought several years of pricing and actuarial model experience to his new role at GuideOne. For the last two years, Jeswani was a graduate teaching assistant for actuarial models and mathematics at Florida State University, and was the senior executive actuary for health and property and casualty insurance at Future Generali India Insurance Company Limited, Mumbai, prior to teaching. “Our team’s strength is passion and enthusiasm,” Rollins said, regarding Groenheide’s new hires. “It amounts to ninety percent of a great worker; people can’t learn passion and enthusiasm.” Groenheide expressed a similar enthusiasm for the growing team as he explained the opportunities that come with starting with a clean slate. “We’re writing business and building our own programs and infrastructure to support that business.” ####### About GuideOne National GuideOne National is a specialty insurance subsidiary of GuideOne Mutual Insurance Company. Rated "A-" (Excellent) by industry analyst A.M. Best, GuideOne is licensed in all 50 states as an excess & surplus carrier. GuideOne’s corporate headquarters are located in West Des Moines, Iowa. Contact GuideOne Insurance Christy Gooding, Director of Marketingcgooding@guideone.com