A regional carrier and a wholesale specialty distributor have each added to their underwriting ranks, with four appointments across the two organizations.
Selective Insurance Group has appointed Jacob E. “Jake” Rothfuss (pictured, first from left) as executive vice president and president, standard lines, a role that has been open since Brenda Hall, the division’s previous EVP and chief operating officer, retired in January 2026. Rothfuss is expected to join no later than April 2027, when his current contractual obligations end.
He comes from Velocity Risk Underwriters, part of Ryan Specialty Underwriting Managers, where he has served as chief executive officer since 2023. He joined the organization in 2018 as chief operating officer and head of systematized risk, and was appointed president in 2020. Before that, he spent nearly a decade at Farmers Insurance, culminating in chief operating officer of business insurance. He began his career at The Hartford across personal auto, homeowners, and small commercial.
At Selective, Rothfuss will lead both standard commercial lines and standard personal lines, reporting to chairman, president and CEO John J. Marchioni.
Selective distributes exclusively through independent agents and has built its standard lines franchise on field underwriting and direct agency relationships across 36 states and the District of Columbia. The standard lines division is the core of that model, and the company’s agent-centric approach to commercial and personal risks has been a consistent differentiator in its agency relationships.
Rothfuss joins having led Velocity Risk Underwriters, a property catastrophe MGU acquired by Ryan Specialty in early 2025, where he served as president before becoming CEO. Earlier in his career he held COO-level roles at Farmers Insurance and began at The Hartford.
CRC Group, the wholesale specialty insurance distributor that places more than $33 billion in annual premium across the US, Canada, and the UK, has added three underwriting team leads to its CRC Specialty division.
Brendan Hagan (pictured, second from left) specializes in fleet transportation underwriting and has worked across underwriting support, production, and agency service roles focused on commercial trucking. James McVey (pictured, second from right) brings more than 22 years across surplus lines brokerage and underwriting, with experience spanning personal lines production and business leadership. Pablo Zapata’s (pictured, first from right) background covers property and casualty underwriting, workers’ compensation portfolio management, and surplus lines brokerage, with binding authority experience across real estate, construction, and hospitality risks.
Commercial trucking and workers’ compensation are lines where standard market capacity has tightened in recent years, and adding underwriters with specific backgrounds in those areas expands the submission options CRC can service for retail agents. The breadth across transportation, P&C, and surplus lines reflects a deliberate effort to cover different submission types rather than duplicate capacity in any single line.
