Good morning.
Good morning.
Thank you for coming today. It's my honor to be with you at Cincinnati Financial Corporation's annual meeting of shareholders. I am Ken Stecher, Chairman of Cincinnati Financial. At this time, I would like to formally call the meeting to order. If any registered shareholder wishes to turn in your proxy, please raise your hand and one of the Inspectors of Election will collect it. Also, any registered shareholder wishing to vote in person can now come to see the Inspectors of Election here to my left to facilitate voting in person. Thank you. I will ask Lisa Love, Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary, to read the notice of the meeting. Lisa?
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I certify that on March 15th, 2013, notice of the annual meeting of shareholders was mailed to those persons who were shareholders of record of the company on March 1st, 2013. That notice provided that the annual meeting would be held at 9:30 A.M. on Saturday, April 27, 2013, at the Cincinnati Art Museum, and that the items of business to be considered at the meeting are, electing 15 directors for one-year terms, ratifying the selection of Deloitte & Touche LLP, as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2013, voting on a non-binding proposal to approve compensation for the company's named executive officers, and voting on a shareholder proposal, if properly introduced at the meeting, and any other business that may properly come before the meeting.
I will include a copy of the notice along with the minutes of the meeting in the company's records.
Thank you, Lisa. Let me now introduce our appointed Inspectors of Election. Molly Grimm, Cincinnati Insurance Secretary. Tom Hogan, Cincinnati Insurance Vice President and Corporate Counsel. Brian Judkins, Dinsmore & Shohl, LLP. Brandon McIntosh, Cincinnati Insurance Senior Shareholder Services Manager. Todd Pendery, Cincinnati Insurance Vice President. Inspectors, please tabulate the shares represented in person and by proxy at this meeting. While the inspectors tabulate the shares, let me follow with some introductions. First, I would like to introduce your company's directors. Please hold your applause until the end, and we'll recognize all of them at once. Please stand as your name is called. The nominees for election at this year's meeting are Bill Bahl, Greg Bier, Linda Clement-Holmes, Dirk Debbink, Steve Johnston, Ken Lichtendahl, Rodney McMullen, Gretchen Price, Jack Schiff Jr., Tom Schiff, Doug Skidmore, John J. Schiff, Jr., Larry Webb, and Tony Woods.
I also am standing for re-election at today's meeting. I think we should give all these directors a great round of applause. Next, I'll introduce the officers who, in addition to me, are on the stage. Jack Schiff Jr., who is Chairman of the Executive Committee. Steve Johnston, who is our President and Chief Executive Officer. Mike Sewell, our Chief Financial Officer, Senior Vice President, and Treasurer. J.F. Scherer, Chief Insurance Officer and Executive Vice President of The Cincinnati Insurance Company. Marty Hollenbeck, Chief Investment Officer and Senior Vice President of Cincinnati Insurance, and President and Chief Operating Officer of CFC Investment Company. Dave Popplewell, President and Chief Operating Officer of The Cincinnati Life Insurance Company. Lisa Love, Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary. We have many company officers here in attendance today, and I would ask all of those to please stand.
Also, would all the other associates who are here today please stand so we can recognize you also? Now I'd like to take a minute and welcome some other special guests to the meeting today. We have quite a few first-time attendees, so I would like to recognize you and thank you for coming. Hopefully, I did not miss anybody. We have Abby Johnston, Debbie Johnston, Andrew Jump, Jesse Moore, Karen Jones, and Terry Jones, Jeff Hemphill, Julia Tigner, Barbara Pope, Melanie Elfin, Michael Ohl, and Bambi Branchfield. Thanks again for coming. We also have some first-time and youngest attendees. We have three children from Brett Starr. Twins Cameron and Bowden, and I'm not sure who the third one is, but Brett, thanks for bringing them to a meeting, and they're going to be long-time shareholders, hopefully.
I also understand today that Nina and Miller Rogers are here. I want to welcome them and thank them for coming. There's a gentleman who some of you know, Bud Holman, who has been a long-time shareholder. He may be the oldest, but I'm not going to say that he is. We want to thank Bud for coming and sharing this meeting with us. Thank you, Bud. From Deloitte & Touche, in case you have questions for them later, I want to introduce the team of Deloitte & Touche. We have Scott Shirk, Steve Suholtz, Sean Fullen, Matt Riggs, and Mack Brackman. I know we have a couple retired directors here today. I have seen Jim Benoski and Alan Weiler. I hopefully have not missed anyone else. Thank you for coming.
This is our 30th consecutive year we have held our shareholder meeting here at the Cincinnati Art Museum. We thank Aaron Betsky, museum director, and the museum staff for making this beautiful facility available to us. At this time, the inspectors may be ready with their proxies. Mr. McIntosh, how many shares are represented at today's meeting?
Mr. Chairman, we, the undersigned inspectors of election, duly appointed to act at the annual meeting of shareholders of Cincinnati Financial Corporation held on the 27th day of April 2013, respectfully report as follows. Number of shares represented in person, zero. Number of shares represented by proxy, 141,550,591. Total number of shares represented, 141,550,591. That's 86% of the shares outstanding. Respectfully submitted, Molly Grimm, Tom Hogan, Brian Judkins, Todd Pendery, and Brandon McIntosh.
Thank you, Brandon. We have a quorum present. The meeting may proceed. Is there a motion to waive the reading of the minutes from the last shareholder meeting of April 28th 2012?
Waive the reading of the minutes of the last annual meeting of shareholders and to approve the minutes as written.
Thank you, Lisa. Is there a second? Thank you. All in favor?
Aye.
Opposed? Motion carried. Thank you very much. We have four items of business to present this year before our inspectors tally the votes. I'd like to also note that the polls are now open for each matter to be voted on at this meeting. The first is the election of directors. To nominate the slate of directors listed on the proxy statement, I'll call on Melissa Bruner, Cincinnati Insurance Assistant Secretary.
Mr. Chairman, I hereby nominate William F. Bahl, Gregory T. Bier, Linda W. Clement-Holmes, Dirk J. Debbink, Steven J. Johnston, Kenneth C. Lichtendahl, W. Rodney McMullen, Gretchen W. Price, John J. Schiff, Jr., Thomas R. Schiff, Douglas S. Skidmore, Kenneth W. Stecher, John S. Steele, Jr., Larry R. Webb, and E. Anthony Woods for election as directors of the company to serve for the terms ending on the date of the annual meeting of shareholders in 2014 and until their successors are elected.
Thank you, Melissa. Are there any other nominations? Seeing none, I declare the nominations closed. The second order of business is to ratify the selection of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2013. To present that proposal, I call on Eric Mathews, Cincinnati Financial Vice President and Principal Accounting Officer.
Good morning, Mr. Chairman. I propose that shareholders ratify the selection of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2013.
Thank you, Eric. Is there any discussions at this time? The third order of business is voting on non-binding resolution to approve compensation for the company's named executive officers. To present this proposal, I call on Betsy Ertl, Cincinnati Insurance Assistant Secretary.
Mr. Chairman, I propose that shareholders approve the non-binding resolution to approve compensation for the company's named executive officers.
Thank you, Betsy. Is there any discussion on this resolution? The last order of business is the shareholder proposal requesting sustainability reporting. Patricia Karr Seabrook from Miller Howard Investments is here to present this proposal.
Good morning. Miller Howard Investments filed a shareholder proposal for Cincinnati Financial to publish an annual sustainability report and reporting on the company's short and long-term responses to environmental, social, and governance related issues, relevant policies, practices, metrics, and goals on topics such as greenhouse gas emissions, water conservation, waste minimization, energy efficiency. Additionally, Miller Howard requests that the company assess its role in reducing systemic harm to the U.S. and global economy and societal welfare from climate change.
It is our position that the insurance industry is in a unique position to leverage its expertise to communicate and to act on climate change and risks by informing public policymaking, by supporting climate awareness among its customers, by providing insurance products with a focus around clean energy and energy efficiency, by providing incentives to customers to lower their carbon footprint, incorporating climate change into investment strategies, reducing its environmental impact of business, and reporting and being accountable. Thank you.
Thank you, Patricia. Is there any discussion at this point? Again, I would invite any registered shareholders present who want to vote in person to come down and see the inspectors of election or raise your hand, and we'll come to you for your comments. Seeing and hearing none, if there's no further discussion on the proposals and no further business at this time, the polls are now closed for each matter to be voted on at this meeting. While the inspectors of election are tallying the votes, Steve and I will talk about your company's 2012 performance and trends that may affect 2013 and beyond. You'll have an opportunity to ask questions at the end of the meeting, so please let us know if you want to hear more on any subject.
As we begin, let me remind you that some of the matters we will discuss are forward-looking and may involve certain risks and uncertainties. You may refer to various filings with the SEC and factors that could cause results to differ materially from those discussed. You can find reconciliations for non-GAAP measures in our most recent quarterly earnings news release, which is available on the investors page of our website, cinfin.com. We have a lot to be excited about at Cincinnati Financial. The company is moving in the right direction using our proven strengths of financial stability, agency relationships, and claims excellence, and working to add new strengths. We are confident in our ability to create future value and to be the carrier of choice for independent insurance agents. To start our 2012 recap, I will mention two items that happened last fall which benefited the leadership of your company.
First, we expanded our board of directors in November to 15, adding someone who may be familiar to you from his past service to Cincinnati Financial, Dirk Debbink. Our shareholders benefit from our strongly engaged board of directors who share their perspectives for a wide variety of experiences. Dirk has achieved outstanding success with his independent business in Wisconsin and with his service to our nation as Vice Admiral, Chief of Navy Reserve, and Commander, Navy Reserve Forces. His leadership and experience in both realms add even more depth to our board and management discussions. Second, J.F. Scherer accepted the additional responsibility of Chief Insurance Officer in September. Naming a Chief Insurance Officer unites our team of leaders responsible for profitable growth of our commercial, personal, and excess and surplus lines of business. J.F. has brought people together, increasing collaboration to drive achievement of our shared goals.
Your company's management team is excited about the progress the entire company has made to improve performance and the plans we have to continue profitably growing our insurance operations. To share with you details of that progress, please welcome Cincinnati Financial President and CEO, Steven Johnston.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to all you. It is just great to see so many shareholders here today. I think we have a great message. This morning I am going to talk about our vision, our strategy, our goals, and the progress that we are making together as a team towards achieving those goals. Our vision is quite simply to be the best company serving independent agents. Our strategy is an independent agency strategy. We were founded by independent agents over 60 years ago. Everything that we do strategically aligns our success with the agents that represent us with their success. A second and very important pillar of our strategy is our field focus.
All of our field people work from their homes in the communities of the agencies, and I think very important, and something that differentiates us, is that our field people have the ability, the authority, and the expectation to make decisions. The third pillar, claims excellence, and you'll see a little bit about this in more detail later. We know that if we can shine on a claim, that is our best form of advertisement, that is really where the rubber meets the road, and what we really strive to do. The fourth pillar, financial strength. We're A+ rated by AM Best. We have over $5.7 billion in GAAP equity supporting about $3.5 billion in net written premium. We sell a promise, and we need to be there to deliver on that promise. The entire strategy rests on a foundation of ethical behavior.
We try to execute the golden rule, to treat each person the way we would want to be treated. We're happy that we were recognized by Forbes magazine again this year amongst their most top trustworthy companies, and in fact, the most trustworthy or highest score in the insurance category. Having a clear vision, a great strategy has put us in a position to put out some very ambitious, challenging, but achievable goals. We went over those last year, and we'll go over them again today. Our goal in terms of growth is to be at $5 billion in direct written premiums by 2015. We need to do that profitably with a goal of a combined ratio of 95% or better. We need to do it efficiently with an expense ratio of 30% or better.
We also recognize the importance of deep ties with our independent agents, and we have a goal to continue to be number one or number two in 75% of the agents that have represented us for five years or more. Of course, investing is an important part of our strategy, and our goal is to outperform the S&P 500 with our equity portfolio and to grow investment incomes. We think our clear vision, our winning strategy, clearly articulated goals is showing up in our numbers. Here we show net income and operating income from 2009 through the first quarter. The green bars are the overall net income. The lines represent operating income. The only difference is the realized and unrealized gains in our investment portfolio. Now, we see a nice strong trend.
If you look at the line there, we were up to $2.40 in operating income Earnings per share at the end of 2012, the positive trend continued into the first quarter with $0.78, which is 62.5% over the 48% that we showed in the same quarter a year ago. Driving this is underwriting profitability. After four consecutive years with an underwriting profit that was unsatisfactorily above 100 in 2012, as you can see by the bar here, we came in at 96.1%, and that's a 13.2% improvement over 2011. I think importantly, if we look at the core or ex-CAT combined ratio, it also showed good improvement down to 86.1%. We really need to continue to strive. We're not quite to that 95% goal yet, but we're making good progress.
It continued into the first quarter with a combined ratio of 91.2, down from 99.1 a year ago. Very important, and it's very much a team effort. Everybody on the team has contributed to this underwriting profit, including our agents as our frontline underwriters. Premium growth is important. Look at this trend in our premium growth. We were actually negative or not growing back in 2009. It steadily increased to 12% growth in 2012, and we're actually up 15% in the first quarter. I think it's very solid growth in that we're seeing it from every single P&C sector had grew by double digits in 2012. It was fueled by new business. This chart shows our new business, and we hit $501 million in new business a year ago.
That's the first time in the history of The Cincinnati Insurance Companies that we ever eclipsed $500 million, an all-time record. Here we see something that's benefiting our growth is appointment of new agents. We appointed in 2012, agents to take us to 1,758 relationships. In terms of the overall premium volume that the agents that we appointed in 2012 wrote, it was $2.2 billion. We have a track record where if we're in an agency for 10 years or more, our share gets to 18%. You can see the confidence that we have to sustain our growth with the appointment of new agents. I think very important, we're talking a lot about team in terms of our growth, in terms of our sales, has been our team effort to sales.
Starts with the agent, obviously, as the point person, but we also, from Cincinnati, will provide sales representatives, loss control people, claims people. Everybody in our organization is in the sales department, we have a short video that we'd like to show you here that describes the team approach to selling.
My relationship with K&N really began many, many years ago through an introduction that was made by a friend of mine that worked at Rudy's. Been a customer for as long as I can remember. It's an institution here in Austin. Restaurants in general historically have been a fairly difficult class for a number of carriers, including Cincinnati, but this particular account had a lot of loss control processes in place, I just felt like it was a good match for all parties.
Having all your inspections and your cooking equipment and clearances all that's to me, bare minimum. Where they exceeded this was in the details of the small things.
K&N Management, Watkins Insurance Group, and Cincinnati Insurance Company all really strive to be the best at what we do. In this particular case, obviously, the first call was to Brian Sturdy, our marketing representative with Cincinnati. He ultimately brought in their loss control and their claims folks. We really wanted to tell the story to the client in this particular account because I knew it would be important to them in that the owner is a prior insurance agent himself.
When he came to approach me about the account, he said he wanted to go out there and sell the whole Cincinnati, the local presence, the local claims person, local loss control. As far as our field team, everybody's right here in Austin.
I actually spent 16 years of my career as an insurance agent doing the same thing Patrick does. I can fully identify with what's a unique, innovative company, and I've never seen one that has the culture and the strategy of Cincinnati. I think because former agents started it, they were able to bring something to the table that nobody else has to offer.
Everybody was involved. Obviously, the agency as the frontline underwriters, Justin from the loss control standpoint, talking to the folks in our home office to get their input before we actually quoted the business. I think that's how we stand out with our agents is just getting everybody involved and pulling all our resources together.
We all rely on each other. We're only as good as each other throughout the process of writing a new account, of really when the rubber meets the road time of when there is a claim, and then in the process through loss control, making sure that everybody's doing all they can to have the safest environment that they possibly can. Again, when all three things are working in tandem, it can really be a powerful equation.
It's one of those expenses that you hope you never need, but if you ever need them, you need to know that they're going to be there, and if you don't have trust, you're always going to question that.
Well, local claim service is very important to our company because when a claim happens, Cincinnati could respond very quickly and be here that same day, if not within the hour.
The culture of the safety and risk management of K&N definitely reflects the culture of Cincinnati Insurance.
I might have stayed in the business if somebody was doing things the way Cincinnati did back then. Get rid of the bureaucracy and just bring a common-sense partnership approach between the insurance company and their customer.
We have used a similar approach to a number of accounts here in the Austin area. We're going to continue to leverage the resources that Cincinnati brings to the local market to help us win new business and to keep the business that we have.
How about that? What a nice team approach to selling. Yeah. Thank you. That's great. You can see why that gives us such confidence in our sales goals. With this next slide, we show the direct written premium, that of everything, including life insurance, as we move towards $5 billion by 2015. You can see the good steady growth that we've had. One thing that's nice to see here in the first quarter, we eclipsed $1 billion. If you'd multiply that by four and annualize it, we're over $4 billion on a run rate basis. Cincinnati Life Insurance also contributes greatly. Here you can see their earnings per share and how steady they are. It's not dependent on the weather, so they give us a nice ballast. We're off to a good start in 2013 with $0.08 a share.
Investing is a very important part of our strategy. These bars show the growth in investment income. You can see nice steady growth from 2009 at just over $500 million up to $531 million at the end of 2012. It's really tough because everybody knows how interest rates are going down. As bonds mature, we have to reinvest at a lower rate. I think the prudent investing in common stocks that pay a dividend and increase the dividend is helping us to grow our investment income. When we look at the appreciation of the assets, this also has been very important.
If we look back to 2009 where the unrealized gains in the investment portfolio were just over $1 billion, to where we are today at over $2.2 billion, when you think about it in terms of writing $3.5 billion in written premium, we nearly have enough capital just in the gains on our investment to support our operations. Investments is extremely important to us. The good profitability, the good growth, the good investing is showing up in our balance sheet. These charts show our statutory surplus, which are the green bars, and our GAAP equity, which are the blue bars. The statutory surplus is now up over $4 billion, again, supporting $3.5 billion in net written premiums. It's a premium surplus ratio, under one, very strong.
When we throw in the cash and marketable securities at the holding company, we're now up to nearly $5.8 billion in GAAP equity. We divide that by the number of shares, the GAAP equity, we get to each shareholder's book value per share. Again, it's reflecting very steady growth. The strong growth in the balance sheet has allowed us to increase our dividend. In fact, we increased our dividend for the 52nd year in 2012. Not just paid a dividend every year for 52 years, we've increased it every year for 52 years. That can only be matched by nine other publicly traded companies. When we look at the appreciation in book value, we look at the dividend, the total of those is our value creation ratio, our primary financial goal.
We reflect the reason that we really focus on value creation ratio is it's very correlated to the total shareholder return of your stock. If we started with a dollar back in 1987 and invested them at the rate of the value creation ratio, it would go up along this light blue line, Carolina blue. The dark line is the total shareholder return. We'll call that, Duke blue. Just to keep anybody from North Carolina, we'll keep you involved here. You can see the strong correlation and why we strive to increase book value, to increase dividends, because that drives shareholder value and the value of your shares. This is another picture that shows the performance that we've had with the total shareholder return on the stock.
Each one of these sets of bars compares us to the S&P 500, the Cincinnati stock to the S&P 500, and S&P's Index of Property and Casualty stocks. They contemplate a holding period up through April 19th. If we look at the most recent one, year-to-date performance, the blue bar, Cincinnati Financial total shareholder return 22.8% so far this year. Versus the S&P 500, which is up 9.7%, and the Index of P&C stocks, which is up 17.3%. We've outperformed. If we go back another year to a purchase date of the end of 2011, we see the same thing, strong outperformance. We're at 64.8%, outperforming both indexes. If we go back another year to 2010, the same picture. 2009, the same picture. In fact, from year-end 2009 to April 19th, your money has more than doubled at 119%, outpacing both indexes.
Over the longer pull also, back to 2002, over 100% appreciation from a purchase date at the end of 2002 through April 19th. The progress, the performance, it's all being recognized. You've seen a lot of very good performance, a lot of good numbers, good stock performance, but they're really all byproducts. The driver is to execute and run a great insurance company. You've seen how team selling comes into play in terms of selling the product. I think most importantly, how we settle claims differentiates us. By differentiating the claim, we're providing great value, and if we continue to do that, all the numbers will take care of themselves. I have another short video that really will demonstrate the value of the claim service.
At about 1:00 in the afternoon, I received a text from my wife, who works in the agency and it had three simple words: "Starting to hail.
If it was outside, most likely it was damaged.
The hail actually went through the winter cover and through the liner itself on the inside.
Three minutes after that, I received a third text from her that said, "Come home now." There were holes in the siding of houses, it looked like somebody had just drove by with a shotgun and started blasting holes in it. I headed to the office, when I got here, David Schultheis had already assembled a small team of four adjusters that were already in the office and apparently had been here for a couple of hours.
We were all here within about 25 minutes of the storm ending.
Those guys went to work worked till dark. By 9:00 that night, we had handed them 400 claims.
When you see the big stack of claims, it kind of gets you a little nervous, but knowing that help was coming, it's a good feeling.
Approximately 18 to 20 adjusters arrived within the next four days.
We were glad. We were glad when Cincinnati showed up.
Never entered my mind to call Cincinnati because I knew they'd already know. It was a fact to me. It was taken for granted that Cincinnati would be on top of it. Their adjusters don't live far away. They watch the weather just like we watch the weather, and they would've already known what had happened and probably would already be taking care of business.
It's not our first rodeo. We've been doing this a lot, and all of us are pretty experienced in it, and we know that it's just taking one claim at a time and treat each person the way we want to be treated when we go out there, and that's what we try to do for Cincinnati.
It's just a matter of being able to use your experience that you've had in the past to go ahead and begin handling claims right away and putting people at ease.
We never thought much about our insurance coverage until that time, and now we think about it a lot.
All this side here's been replaced. Windows, siding, aluminum.
You have to look at the house and figure those things out for yourself with your own eyes, and that's what Cincinnati does.
I love Cincinnati Insurance Company. It's why we pay insurance premiums. It's there when you need it. Hopefully, you never will, but we did in a very big way, and it was there for us.
To be there and to assist them through the hard times, that's what we do. That's what Cincinnati does. That's what our agency does. That's why they pay us, is to keep that promise.
They're selling that policy to someone, and that may be their neighbor, that may be a friend.
I don't spend dollars on advertising. We need the claim service for our advertisement, and with Cincinnati behind it works well. They're there. You can count on them, and you can count on them every time. That's what we need, and that's what we ask for, and that's what we get.
How about that? We have several members from our claims department here led by Marty Mullen. Marty, why don't you and all the claims people stand up? We'd like to recognize you. Jim, you, too. Jim Benoski, you're part of it [and everything . Excellent job. I think in conclusion, what we'd like to communicate today is we have a clear vision. We have a very effective strategy. We've set demanding but achievable goals, and I think most importantly, we're effectively, as a team, executing and delivering great value from the loss control to the point of sale to the claims of the ability of our insurance company. I think that should give you great confidence as we go forward at the continued growth and the value of Cincinnati Financial Corporation. Thank you. I'd like to turn it back over to our chairman, Mr. Ken Stecher.
Thank you, Steve. Before we hear from the inspectors of election, I'd like to remind shareholders of a service we can provide for you. Shareholders of record can choose to hold shares in book entry form instead of keeping track of paper certificates. We want to make it easy to own Cincinnati Financial stock and to reinvest dividends, compounding your returns over time, as Steve showed in one of the slides. As he also mentioned, your company again qualified for the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats. Our 52-year record of increasing dividends is matched by only a handful of companies. Inspectors, do you have the preliminary results of the voting?
Mr. Chairman, we, the undersigned inspectors of election, duly appointed to act at the annual meeting of shareholders of Cincinnati Financial Corporation, held on the 27th day of April, 2013, hereby submit our preliminary report on results of the voting. For the first proposal, the election of directors, each of this year's nominees received at least 92% of the shares present or represented and entitled to vote at the meeting. For the second proposal, approximately 98% of the votes cast were voted in favor of ratification of the appointment Deloitte & Touche LLP as the company's independent audit firm. For the third proposal, approximately 97% of the shares present or represented and entitled to vote at the meeting were voted in favor of the non-binding proposal to approve the compensation for the company's named executive officers.
For the fourth proposal, approximately 24% of the shares present or represented and entitled to vote at the meeting were voted in favor of the shareholder proposal to require sustainability reporting. Respectfully submitted, Molly Grimm, Tom Hogan, Brian Judkins, Todd Pendery, and Brandon McIntosh.
Thank you, Molly. It appears all directors have been elected. The proposal to ratify the appointment of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the company's independent audit firm, and a non-binding proposal to approve the compensation for the company's named executive officers have passed. The shareholder proposal to require sustainability reporting did not pass. The Inspectors of Election will furnish the Secretary with a written report of the final vote count with respect to the matters voted on today to be included in the minutes of the meeting. We'll announce results once they are certified early next week. At this time, we will welcome your questions. We want to learn more about your interest in our business. Please come down to one of the two microphones we've set up to share your comment or to ask your question.
That we can keep the meeting on schedule and allow everyone to speak who wishes to, please keep your comments or questions to two minutes or less. Steve, would you please join me at the lectern to help answer the questions? If there's any questions, please. Seeing no one moving forward, it seems like there are no questions. We would like to say, as the Cincinnati Financial team and to our shareholders, we thank you very much for coming and showing the interest in our company. I think you saw today the strength of the management team, the objectives that we have, the plan that we have going forward. We are executing on that now. We know we have to continue to execute to deliver the value to all of you. We are intent on doing that. We have great opportunities to expand our business.
We see great times ahead. As soon as the economy improves a little more and interest rates start to go up, as you can see, the earnings will really have an opportunity to increase once the interest rates turn. Thanks again for your interest. Please take a few minutes afterwards to talk to each other, share some additional refreshments. Look forward to seeing you again next year. Thank you very much.