Nationwide E&S president Clark to retire at end of 2020

US insurer Nationwide has begun a search for a new president of its excess and surplus lines (E&S) and specialty division after Tom Clark announced he will retire at the end of the year.

Clark has served as the leader of the E&S operations since 2015. It was rebranded to Nationwide E&S from Scottsdale Insurance Company in 2016

Before taking that role, Clark was senior vice president of field operations for Allied Insurance, a role he also held at Harleysville when it merged with Nationwide in 2012.

He will retire from the insurer after 21 years combined with Nationwide and Harleysville and more than 33 years in the insurance industry.

“Tom has played an important role in expanding Nationwide’s Excess & Surplus/Specialty organization,” said Mark Berven, president of Nationwide’s property casualty business lines. “Through his strong leadership and vision, we created new partnership opportunities like the acquisition of commercial program leader E-Risk and establishing Geneva Re with Ryan Specialty Group and N2G, our international offering with Generali.”

Nationwide said a search for his replacement will begin immediately.

In June, Clark reported that Nationwide E&S was seeing price increases in almost every line. He said this was due to a tightening in the availability of capacity in the excess casualty and property segments.

“That tightening of capacity has continued, which has allowed the industry to up price on almost every line of business out there,” Clark said. “We believe [the rate increases] will continue. We just don’t know for how long.”