License to Lead: Meet Young Agent Ryder Roberts 

• By: AnneMarie McPherson Spears
• June 1, 2025

Ryder Roberts 

Producer 

C3 Insurance  

San Diego 

Age: 30 

Go-to drink order: Hot Americano  

Favorite movie: “Tombstone” 

No. 1 item on bucket list: Go dall sheep hunting in Alaska 

Why insurance? 

I played water polo in college, and one of my coaches owned an independent insurance agency. As I was preparing to graduate, I learned more about what he did and first dipped my toes in the water at his agency. I went full-force into the industry after that. 

Best thing about being an independent agent? 

The spirit of being entrepreneurial and nimble allows for better client service in the long run. Independent agents can build the exact service model they need and want by being creative and dynamic. 

The needs of manufacturing or tech companies compared to real estate or construction companies are completely different. Understanding those areas and putting the people in place to facilitate the potential hurdles is super important. 

Future of the industry? 

Automation will be vast throughout our industry. It can go one of two ways. It could shrink our workforce or we can see the opportunity to reallocate human capital to other areas of our business as we come up with different areas where we can add value. We can enhance our service offerings in ways that will broadly impact clients by thinking outside the box about what other value-adds we can bring as insurance brokers. I’m curious to see what we’ll come up with over the next 5, 10, 15 years. 

Work-life balance?  

During difficult renewals and certain stages of a service cycle, you’re going to be working a lot of hours. When underwriters are based in London, sometimes the only time they’re available is super early in the morning. At the same time, there’s more than enough opportunity to find time to spend with your family and take time for yourself and get your mind right. There are lulls where you can invest time and energy into relationships outside of work. 

Millennial stereotypes?  

There are truths and exaggerations, but the biggest misconception is that older generations feel that because we don’t work as long hours, we’re not accomplishing the same amount of work. The millennial generation is tech-savvy and grew up with tech becoming a need in the working world and because of that, we’re able to be efficient and accomplish a lot of the same tasks in a smaller amount of time.  

Because of that, if you’re being more efficient and plug in as many hours as your predecessors, you’re going to accomplish more and differentiate yourself. It’s on us to understand what opportunities technology provides our industry to be more efficient and grow at a faster rate than generations before us.  

Benefits and challenges of multiple generations in the workplace?  

Nothing beats wisdom, experience and perspective. Having people who have gone through it and can give their advice and insights on situations that arise is super impactful. They can really tell the story of why things have gotten to where they are—and that’s important to understand as you try to accomplish something new.  

As a young, hungry go-getter, you have to understand that’s not everyone else’s goal. You have to be sensitive to where people are in their life and career.  

Biggest challenges in California?  

There’s very little that’s easy in California when it comes to operating a business. We have some of the strictest regulations and the highest pricing of labor and material. And, by the way, we have extreme weather events—from fires to floods. So not only are we dealing with high costs of construction, hard-to-obtain building permits and a litigious environment on the employment side of things, we’re also dealing with these catastrophic losses that are flipping loss ratios upside down.  

What solutions do you see?   

We need to come up with a way to work with lending institutions to figure this out. Are the lending requirements too strict? Do they need to readjust? Do we need to recalculate our underwriting for insurance in a broader sense?  

In the short term, it’s all about communication. No one wants to have their broker show up on their doorstep with a 300% rate increase. Be proactive. If you’re working with the insurance company throughout the policy period—updating roofs, electrical systems, brush mitigation, all those things—you’re showing them you’re a partner to the insurance company rather than just purchasing something at the end of the year.  

Long term, it’s about coming up with creative solutions to structure a program. We see a lot of alternative risk placements these days: captives, retros, large deductible programs, self-insuring. If you’re bringing these creative options to your client, they’re looking to you as an advisor rather than an insurance procurer. We’re going to see more and more companies go into these alternative risk programs.  

AnneMarie McPherson Spears is IA news editor.