One of St. Pete’s biggest companies has a new CEO

United Insurance Holdings Corp. will have a new chairman and chief executive officer, effective July 1.

Daniel Peed, an insurance industry veteran and vice chairman of the company’s board of directors, will take the top spots at United Insurance (Nasdaq: UIHC), a property and casualty insurance firm that does business as UPC Insurance. The company last year announced plans to build a new headquarters in downtown St. Petersburg, adjacent to its current headquarters site at 800 2nd Ave. S.

Peed will succeed John Forney, who has been CEO since 2012 and added the additional role of president in 2013. Forney is stepping down effective June 30 to pursue other opportunities, a news release from the company said.

Greg Branch, who has served as chairman of the board since the company’s founding in 1999, will remain a member of the board and assume the title of chairman emeritus effective July 1.

Peed was a co-founder of AmRisc LLC and served as that insurance company’s president and CEO from December 2000 to December 2018. He most recently served as AmRisc’s non-executive vice chairman from December 2018 until December 2019. Peed has been vice chairman of the United Insurance board since the acquisition of American Coastal Insurance Company in April 2017.

United Insurance, with 363 employees as of Dec. 31, is one of the largest companies headquartered in St. Petersburg. It’s also the only publicly held local company with no women on its board of directors.

The company reported $825.1 million in total revenue last year, with a net loss of almost $30 million, or 70 cents a share. The company was still in the red in the first quarter of 2020, with a net loss of $12.7 million, or 30 cents a share, on revenue of $176.3 million. Although underwriting results improved in Q1 2020, the company said it recorded unrealized losses on equity securities driven by the market’s reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic.