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A bad car accident at age 17 left Hartley native Darin Roggenburg in a wheelchair, changing his career direction from becoming a farmer like his father to studying finance. After graduating from Southwest Minnesota State University, Roggenburg moved to Des Moines and got a job at Hawkeye Security Insurance Co. as a statutory accountant. A few years later, he joined Farmers Mutual Hail Insurance Company of Iowa in the reinsurance department, and over the next 17 years moved up to become chief financial officer, treasurer and now a board member as of Jan. 1.

What do you like about FMH?

The company here is awesome. It’s a mutual insurance company, but it’s run by the Rutledge family for the most part. It’s not just a single family of the Rutledges. I think there are three or four different branches of the family, so there’s a large number of those family members here. But they treat everybody extremely well. It’s truly a family company. There’s a lot of values that are more aligned with what you would call your family responsibilities, so it’s a very comfortable place to work in that regard.

Is that what you like most about your job?

The thing I probably like the most about my job is just working with the numbers. The thing that’s the most rewarding to me is actually doing financials and looking at them and analyzing them and trying to help guide the company forward in the future the best way possible.

What is one priority you’re working on now?

One of my big responsibilities is the investment side of the company, so I’m always monitoring that and always looking for any changes in the market that we need to bring into the investment portfolio and make changes there. Another initiative that’s going on in our industry, because we write purely crop insurance, the farm bill is up for debate right now and it has a huge impact on our business whatever comes out of that. So I’m very closely monitoring the farm bill situation and how that could impact our company.

Has your role changed much since you were promoted to the board?

To be honest, I was involved a lot at the board level for the last year or two. So I can’t say it was a dramatic overnight change, but my role has changed over the last couple of years. I used to be hands on, doing the actual financials, and now it’s more from a broader perspective, looking at things from a higher altitude and doing more planning out into the future.

Were you surprised by the move?

Especially because it is a company that’s run by the Rutledge family members. There are only two non-family-member board seats. I’m very proud that they trust me to put me into that capacity.

How did the car accident reshape your life?

I basically look at myself like I’ve led two lives. I led my life up until the accident when I was 17, and I’ve lived a separate life since the accident. It’s a pretty traumatic thing. But it happened to me at an age, when at 17, if you have to have something like that happen to you, I almost look back at it as that’s an opportune time because you’re not so set in your ways at that time. You haven’t built a career; you haven’t built a family. You’re at a turning point in your life anyway at that stage. So for me, the transition wasn’t difficult. I accepted it right away and moved on.

Where would someone find you on the weekends?

I have a wife and daughter, age 5, so on the weekends I spend most of my time with them doing whatever a 5-year-old wants to do and the wife wants to do. The one thing that I am is an avid pool player.

Do you compete?

I’ve competed in a lot of tournaments in the past and locally I play on a league team here every Thursday night. We’ve been to a number of places, Las Vegas, you name it. Skill-wise, I’m at the top of the skill level here in Des Moines.