About Us > Our Roots

“Our Roots” are those of an underdog. We’re entrepreneurs, so each success has come with a commensurate amount of hard work.

Back in 1982, our founders, Susan and Judd Shoval, first drew the idea of GUARD on a napkin over lunch in their home town of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. They were agents with a large book of commercial business and no Workers’ Compensation market . . . so they came up with a plan to start their own company. Over the next twenty years, growth followed because GUARD saw a special niche within the marketplace (small- to mid-sized businesses) that was underserved by traditional commercial insurers. As one of the "Main Street-type" businesses we targeted, we eagerly accepted these accounts AND retained them by offering unprecedented levels of service to policyholders who were (especially at that time) unaccustomed to being the focus of attention.

Today, the entrepreneurial spirit of our roots still lives. Our current CEO, Sy Foguel, has taken the pulse of the marketplace and believes that insurance has become an overly complicated but increasingly critical challenge for smaller business owners. As a result, he feels the time is right to make GUARD the place to go for simple, fast, and reliable “One-Stop Insurance Shopping.” This vision marked the start of BizGUARD Plus, and we are currently taking this product into more and more states. This success has been one of many proud milestones ― download Our Roots to read about some others.