We have a responsibility to keep our customers up-to-date on important issues that directly affect them. All of these are driven by technology today. In fact, technology has significantly changed the industry in the last five years, from the lowest level, in terms of how we print and issue policies and send out bills; to a higher level of how we collect and analyze data to better understand what's happening; to perhaps the highest level, which has to do with how we model and do sophisticated pricing. One of the biggest drivers of change in the insurance business is technology. Doing these things goes back to a basic philosophy that we aren't here just to collect premiums, we also have to participate in the communities in which we work and live. Or, maybe they could get involved with their civic authorities to get them to do a better job of protecting homes.

It helps people when deciding where they want to live. For example, we recently published a study we commissioned on cities around the nation that have a higher incidence of theft and burglary claims. Third, working through our media relations department, we constantly talk to the media about key issues, not just when there is a big lawsuit or when something bad has happened. Or we suggest publications our agents can buy to send to their customers so the customers are kept up-to-date on important issues. Second, we have a responsibility to provide information to our agents, which we do through a variety of publications that we supply to our agents.

We think that's important. It is a magazine full of information our customers can use to better their lives, whether it is travel, technology issues, financial information, and it even offers some ways in which they can use insurance and financial services to solve their worries and achieve their dreams. In our organization we do three major things, among others: First, we publish a magazine, "Friendly Exchange," for our customers, which is not an insurance magazine. There are many public, independent sources for doing that, such as the Insurance Information Institute, but we also want to assist customers in understanding insurance issues that might affect them. They are buying things that were never broadly owned before. They are gathering wealth at a more rapid pace than any previous generation.

The "baby boomers" are the fastest growing segment of the population. The last driver of change is the buying habits of consumers. The second biggest driver is the fact that consumers are changing.