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An official from Nationwide told those who attended the Kick-Off lunch during OFBF’s annual meeting that the working relationship between the insurance and financial company and Ohio Farm Bureau is a "marvelous working partnership."

Steve Rasmussen, president and chief operating officer of Nationwide’s property and casualty insurance operations, and the Allied and Farmland Insurance Companies, said this year’s record membership effort was a collaboration between Farm Bureau’s volunteers and the 500 Nationwide agents who sold 18,000 new memberships.

"This year was a marvelous year in terms of memberships. The Nationwide agencies were hard at it again working very hard to bring new memberships on," he said. "Twenty-two agencies signed up more than 100 new members, and 121 agencies signed up more than 50 members bringing the total memberships working with you all this year to a total record-breaking number of 216,000 memberships."

Rasmussen came to Ohio from Iowa. He thanked Farm Bureau’s leadership for helping make his transition "wonderful."

"It’s been marvelous working with (Ohio Farm Bureau) the last few months – getting to know a lot of the Farm Bureau leadership, getting to understand the rich heritage that the Nationwide family has with the Ohio Farm Bureau," he said, adding the two organizations have been "working through the last 77 years together to do good things right here in the state of Ohio for the state and for agriculture and for all of our policyholders."

He said 2003 had been a fine year for Nationwide despite Hurricane Isabelle and the wildfires in California. And he credited the company’s work with Farm Bureau in developing a new farm policy that will be introduce nationally in 2004.

He said that Nationwide is the largest writer of farm insurance in the United States. "We take that with great pride, and we want to continue to move forward with that. We’ve made a renewed commitment across all of our states (in which) we do business to increase our farm share nationally and become the leading writer in every state that we do business in, not just in a few selected states. There are some huge opportunities for all of us to take the economies of scale that we have in the farm business – the knowledge and relationships we have with all of you – to take that forward across the United States and expand our farm position."

He added the company has put an emphasis on farm and farm business safety. "We’re trying to do the right thing to keep people protected."

Rasmussen credited Nationwide’s core values as coming from "the roots" of the company. He recognized the current members of Nationwide’s board who previously served on the OFBF Board of Trustees: Chair Arden Shisler, Irv Bell, Tim Corcoran, Ken Davis, Fred Finney, Dave Miller, Jim Patterson and Bob Stewart.

"I look forward to becoming an Ohioan," Rasmussen said, "and hope to get a chance to get to know the communities in Ohio."