History

Roark & Sutton was formed in December of 2017 by John Roark and Michael Sutton.  John and Michael started in the insurance business at Federated Mutual Insurance and were each there for over six years.  They transitioned from Federated to a regional broker where they learned the business from the broker side instead of being an agent for just a single company.  After a couple years they made the decision to purchase their clients and open the doors of their own agency.  The focus of their agency is taking care of clients the way they would want to be treated if they were sitting on the client’s side of the table.

The time spent at Federated was very valuable due to the education John and Michael received being able to work directly with their underwriters daily.  Getting to know the underwriting process very closely allows for the best depiction of a client’s risk to be portrayed to an underwriter, and when the underwriter is happy usually the client is too.

Our agency began with a handful of clients and about $2,500,000 in premium and within five years we have grown to nearly $25,000,000 in premium written.  The focus behind our agency is still to take care of our clients the way we would want to be taken care of.  Personal relationships are the foundation of our business, and we will travel great distances just to spend time with our clients face to face.  We have embraced some technological changes which help make our client’s service experience better and give them more autonomy; however, we are also available to personally handle service needs.

Carrier relationships are the backbone of our business.  Having solid foundations with our carriers allow us to take care of our clients in the best way possible.  Our network of specialized carriers and wholesalers allow us to help our clients and we have a great appreciation for the work our carrier representatives and underwriters do for our clients every day.

We will continue to grow in the niche focused commercial property and casualty arenas we specialize in.  We are not the solution for every type of business; however, for the industries which we have chosen to focus our expertise and efforts we strive to be the pinnacle of service and risk mitigation for those clients.