Progressive 2008 Annual Report Download - page 11

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translates to 350,000 additional policies spread across our prod-
uct offerings. A closer look will show these additions have come
in our Direct auto offering, which has been and continues to
be a referendum on changing consumer shopping behavior. Our
9% growth in policies, and 4% increase in written premiums,
coupled with attractive improvements in expected customer
tenure, are top echelon results in this environment and forecast
to me even better days ahead.
Our industry leading special lines group, serving motorcyclists,
motor home and small boat owners, also gained a disproportion-
ate share of our new customers in 2008. Some of these products
represent more discretionary consumer spending and, in the near
term, we may struggle to see significant market growth in units.
Similarly our Commercial Auto business group turned in a
very respectable year, but ended the year with about the
same number of policies as it started the year. The more recent
trends in growth and retention reflect the depressed outlook
for contractors and tradesmen.
Our biggest challenge continues to be growing our agent
business. While increasing our acceptance for agents more
preferred and commercial customers, we have lost some momen-
tum in our traditional strength niche for agents—nonstandard
auto. Agents are critical to our success and our focus is, as it
should be, on providing products that continuously allow them
to “win” with Progressive. The Operations Summary in this
report will provide more details on specifics of new product
and service developments for agents. Our goal is a constant
and always worth reinforcing—To grow as quickly as possible,
constrained only by our profitability objective and ability to
provide high-quality customer service. That said, we must ag-
gressively meet all competitive challenges through increased
segmentation and innovation.