Larry Deiter has taken over from Merle Scheiber as director of the South Dakota Division of Insurance.
Deiter had been serving as interim director since Dec. 4, when Scheiber resigned, according to South Dakota Labor and Regulation Secretary Marcia Hultman. Scheiber resigned for personal reasons, officials said. Scheiber could not immediately be reached for comment.
Scheiber had been South Dakota’s top insurance regulator since 2005. He was active at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). This year, he was chairman of the NAIC’s Workers’ Compensation Task Force and the Crop Insurance Working Group.
In 2011, Scheiber lost his own home to flooding. He testified before a Senate committee later that year that he believed the flooding was the result of poor management of dams by the Army Corps of Engineers.