pricing, backed by the financial strength of a Fortune 400 company.
We’ve enrolled closed to 5,000 families in the program so far and the number continues to grow by about 75 to 100 families a week. Our agents are talking to customers about the pilot program and participating families are also spreading the word to other families.
American Family pushed the envelope by taking on the Teen Safe Driver program. Many of our customers are reaping the benefits of that decision. We feel certain that some teens are alive today because of that program. Teen Safe Driver is increasing customer loyalty among parents and it just might be paving the way for the next generation of American Family Insurance customers. At this point, we’d be happy to open it up to any questions that anyone might have.
MCDONALD: Thank you Ken, and Rick, Bill, Debbie. Excellent presentation. I’m going to go to our judges first. Jaimie, I’ll start with you. What would you like to know?
PICKLES: Thanks, Lee and congratulations American Family team on a great presentation. It was very informative and I learned a lot in addition to what I had known about the program. A couple of questions. First, I’m very curious about the whole notion of the Teen Driver program and where the idea originated within the company and then the approach that that group of person took to take it through the process to gain awareness and acceptance internally at the company to discuss feasibility of execution
WESTRATE: The program was initiated in our marketing division. This was after DriveCam approached us with their technology and we had an opportunity to review it with them, consider those possibilities and really partner with them for the University of Iowa study we referred to earlier. So we worked with them from the very start on piloting this for a teen application.
PICKLES: The reason I ask is that I’ve been in the industry for a long time and I’ve worked with a lot of companies. A lot of great ideas get brought up at the companies. Then, throughout the discussions, the notion just doesn’t carry any further. Great idea and then through the execution stage it just basically falls flat. It’s a very innovative product and I’m just curious about your process internally at American Family that made this program launch successful. What do you attribute to that?
WESTRATE: I think we can attribute the success of the company adopting the idea to the innovation in the program itself. Most people are either parents of a teen driver, they’ve been through the experience, or they know somebody else who’s been through the experience. Most people are aware if they read the papers and watch television and read the news on the Web everyday, that young people are dying every single day in huge numbers. This has an emotional connotation to it that many other programs that insurance companies talk about don’t have. It really was not an extremely difficult sell because everybody can relate to this. Because it is so unique. Because it involves the technology that it does, and the ease and convenience. It was like one of those light bulbs that went off. The general reaction among decision makers across the company was: wow, this certainly deserves a chance. I don’t think we really had any formidable obstacles Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11