YAC Spotlight: Ander Urdaneta

My dad started in the insurance world in Venezuela, where my family is from, when he was 23 or 24. I grew up seeing how it worked, and it always intrigued me. But I ended up going to school for finance because I wanted to do private equity. During COVID, I realized I wasn’t a big fan of the corporate side and wanted to step away. I already had my 2-20 license, which I got right out of high school, so I quit my job and decided to open an agency. So, my first insurance job was opening my agency in 2021.  

JP Gomez, who I first met in high school, is the whole reason I’m here. Three years ago, when I first opened my agency, I took a leap of faith and went to my first Convention to get CE credits and the gentleman who was helping the instructor was JP. We talked, and he told me he worked for FAIA. I called him a lot after that, and he got me into YAC. Many of the members are super helpful and are people I can call whenever I have a hard risk to place or a complicated question. I think we all have the same mentality that there’s enough business to go around and I don’t see them as competitors—they're colleagues.  

Follow your gut. It’s not going to be easy at the beginning but stick to it. If you can make it through the second year, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. You’re playing the long game in insurance. 

The diversity of risk. Every client is different, and every risk is different, especially in commercial. Try to look at it from an underwriter’s perspective; always look at the worst-case scenario and go based off that.  

I think now more than ever everyone wants to travel and be everywhere. When I lived with my parents, we were always able to travel every summer. I was lucky enough to have my dad be able to pick me up from school. And that’s thanks to insurance, because he had flexibility in how he managed his time. That attracted me and that's why I took the leap. As long as I have Wi-Fi, I can be anywhere. 

Social skills. You can be the most organized person in the world or a master with Excel sheets. You can be whatever you want, but if you can’t talk to people you won’t be successful. 

I like exercising, dirt bikes, hiking—anything that’s going to keep me on my toes and give me that adrenaline rush.   

My grandfather, who was a business owner, too. If he gave you his word on something, no matter what happened, you knew whatever he told you was going to happen. That’s a big reason why people respected him in business. One night, I had dinner with a very good friend of mine and his dad, and his dad told me I reminded him of my grandfather. He told me that when he used to do deals with my grandfather, he would stick to his word. It was nice to hear someone say that about my grandpa and say that they saw that in me. 

Unpredictable. I go by whatever feels right at the moment. I take everything I do one day at a time. I have goals for the agency, and every once and a while, I’ll make sure we’re still on track, but I don’t focus on them—I just go day-by-day. If tomorrow I wake up and I want to book a flight with my wife to go somewhere, we’ll book, and I’ll reschedule whatever I need to reschedule. 

When someone tells me they’re going to do something and they don’t come through.