Senior vice president of employee benefits

Hub International Ltd.

Age: 34

Randy Rider's career in employee benefits brokerage is already taking on something of a mythical air.

Since joining Hub International Ltd. as a Newport Beach, California-based senior vice president of employee benefits in 2009, Mr. Rider has grown his book of business by at least $280,000 every year, placing him in the top 1% of the firm's sales executives and earning him the distinction of “Hub Legend.”

“Whatever the "it factor' is in this business, Randy's certainly got it,” said Kirk Christ, president of operations at Hub in Riverside, California. “I wish I had 1,000 more brokers like him. He's just really good at what he does.”

Mr. Rider said much of what he's accomplished as a leader within Hub International's employee benefits unit is owed to his emphasis on the importance of proactively managing relationships with clients and, crucially, their employees.

“Working on the retail side of insurance, I saw the relationships that some of the stronger brokers had with their clients and decided that was what I wanted,” Mr. Rider said. “It's an ongoing relationship in which I'm going to be able to lend value to our clients and interact with them on a daily basis.”

In particular, Mr. Rider said he and his team have focused a considerable amount of energy on developing effective benefits communication strategies tailored to individual employee populations, which he insists are indispensable in any sound benefits strategy.

“Benefits are a huge investment for our clients — typically the second-largest portion of their expenses, after actual employee wages — and when you think about it like that, communications become absolutely key for those companies in terms of attracting and retaining great talent,” Mr. Rider said. “If you spend millions of dollars on that investment, but you don't effectively communicate with your people on how they can use these benefits and how they work in their favor, you've essentially thrown that investment out the window.”