Welcome, everyone. It's an honor to be with you at Cincinnati Financial Corporation's annual meeting of shareholders. I am Ken Stecher, Chairman of Cincinnati Financial Corporation. While I've attended many of these meetings, this is the first time I will be your host. At this time, I would like to formally call the meeting to order. If any registered shareholder wishes to turn in a 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 your voting in person. I will now ask Lisa Love, the Corporation's Secretary and General Counsel, to read the notice of the meeting.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I certify that on March 16th, 2012, notice of the annual meeting of the shareholders was mailed to those persons who were shareholders of record of the company on March 1, 2012. That notice provided that the annual meeting be held at 9:30 A.M. on Saturday, April 28th, 2012, at the Cincinnati Art Museum, that the items of business to be considered at the meeting are electing 10 directors for one-year terms, ratifying the selection of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2012, voting on a non-binding proposal to approve compensation for the company's named executive officers, adopting the Cincinnati Financial Corporation 2012 Stock Compensation Plan, 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, the Cincinnati Financial Corporation Secretary, Chuck Hertlein, Dinsmore & Shohl LLP, Tom Hogan, Cincinnati Insurance Associate Counsel, Todd Pendery, Cincinnati Insurance Vice President, Blake Slater, Cincinnati Insurance Assistant Vice President. Inspectors, please tabulate the shares represented in person or 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 each of them has been announced. Please stand as your name is called. The nominees for election at this year's meeting are Bill Bahl, Steve Johnston, Ken Lichtendahl, Rodney McMullen, Gretchen Price, Jack Schiff Jr., Tom Schiff, John Schiff Jr., and Tony Woods. I also am standing for re-election today.
Continuing to serve as your directors are Greg Bier, Linda Clement-Holmes, Doug Skidmore, and Larry Webb. Thank you all for your efforts on the behalf of the shareholders of Cincinnati Financial. Next, I'll introduce the company officers accompanying me on stage. Jack Schiff Jr., Chairman of the Executive Committee, many of you know the number of years that he has served as our chairman, so thank you, Jack. Steve Johnston, our President and Chief Executive Officer. Mike Sewell, our Chief Financial Officer. J.F. Scherer, Executive Vice President of The Cincinnati Insurance Companies. Marty Hollenbeck, our President of CFC Investment Company and Chief Investment Officer. Tom Joseph, President of The Cincinnati Casualty Company. Dave Popplewell, President of The Cincinnati Life Insurance Company, Lisa Love, Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary.
We have many company officers in attendance today, and I would ask if each of you would stand, please. I was going to ask that all of you continue to stand while we also ask the rest of our associates to also stand for recognition. We have other associates, please stand. I'd like to take a moment too and just welcome a couple other guests. I know we have Phil Shepardson here from Beckman Weil Shepardson. Phil. Chuck Hertlein from Dinsmore & Shohl. They are both respected partners of our company and handle some legal affairs. From Deloitte & Touche, Don Schwegman is here. Don, would you like to introduce members of your team that are with you?
Thank you, Ken. I have with me fellow partners, Pat Kirk and Matt Grace.
Thank you. I know we also have some retired directors that I would like to acknowledge. Jim Benosky. John Shepherd and Alan Wyler. We have past officer, Ted Alchinski. I know Ted's here. I see him. Thank you for attending today. We also have quite a few first-time attendees at this meeting. Mark McBeth is here, Gary Grimm, Billy Follick, Debbie and Jody Bradley, John Louder, Colleen McPheron, Dale and Bernadine Overly, Bill and Carol Jansen, Leonard and Rochelle Norburg Todd Hilgeman, Caleb Francis, Steve Stoffel, Barry Anderson, and Larry Woods. I want to thank you for attending this meeting. It's tradition, we always do try to recognize the youngest shareholder, and I believe that person today is Will Schiff. I think he's six years old. We have one shareholder who came with our director, Larry Webb. His name is Joe Yu.
He's from Hunan Province, China. He's a Chinese teacher at Lima Senior High School in Hunan Province. That's 4,000 miles away. I think we have the person who's come the longest distance to attend our meeting. Mr. Yu, would you. He's in the back. It's great to have a lot of first-time attendees. I think it shows that we have a lot of interest in our company, and we hope today to give you an update on the past year, of course, and where we look forward to going in the future. This is our 29th consecutive year that we've had our annual shareholder meeting here at the Cincinnati Art Museum. We thank Aaron Betsky, museum director, and the museum staff for their gracious welcome. Is Aaron here? He's not. Okay. Thank you. At this time, the inspectors may be ready with proxies.
Mr. Slater, 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 28th day of April, 2012, respectfully report as follows: number of shares voted in person, 8,349. Number of shares represented by proxy, 137,378,115. Total number of shares represented, 137,386,464. That is 85% of the shares outstanding. Respectfully submitted, Chuck Hertlein, Molly Grimm, Tom Hogan, Todd Pendery, and Blake Slater.
Thank you, Blake. We have a quorum present and the meeting may proceed. Is there a motion to waive the reading of the minutes of last year's shareholder meeting of April 30th, 2011?
Mr. Chairman, I move to waive the reading of the minutes of the last annual meeting of shareholders and to approve the minutes as written.
Thank you. Is there a second?
Second.
All in favor?
Aye.
Opposed?
Aye.
Motion carried. Thank you. 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 at this meeting. The first is the election of directors. To nominate the slate of directors and listed on the proxy statement, I call on Dennis McDaniel, Cincinnati Insurance Vice President and Investor Relations.
Good morning, Mr. Chairman. I hereby nominate William F. Bahl, Steven J. Johnston, Kenneth C. Lichtendahl, W. Rodney McMullen, Gretchen W. Price, John J. Schiff, Jr., Thomas R. Schiff, Kenneth W. Stecher, John J. Schiff, Jr., and E. Anthony Woods for election as directors of the company to serve for terms ending on the date of the annual meeting of shareholders in 2013 and until their successors are elected.
Thank you, Dennis. Are there 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 2012. To present this proposal, I call on Eric Mathews, Cincinnati Financial Vice President and Principal Accounting Officer.
Mr. Chairman, I propose that the shareholders ratify the selection of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm in 2012.
Thank you, Eric. Is there any discussion at this time? Thank you. The third order of business is voting on a non-binding proposal to approve compensation for the company's named executive officers. To present this proposal, I'll call on Betsy Ertl, Cincinnati Insurance Assistant Secretary.
Mr. Chairman, I propose that shareholders approve the non-binding proposal to approve compensation for the company's named executive officers.
Thank you, Betsy. Is there any discussion on this proposal? Seeing none, the fourth order of business is adopting the Cincinnati Financial Corporation 2012 Stock Compensation Plan. To present this proposal, I call on Teresa C. Cracas, Cincinnati Insurance Senior Vice President and Chief Risk Officer.
Mr. Chairman, I propose that the shareholders adopt the Cincinnati Financial Corporation 2012 Stock Compensation Plan.
Thank you, Teresa. Is there any discussion on this proposal? Seeing none, again, I would like to invite any 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 voted on at this meeting. While the inspectors of election are tallying the votes, Steve and I will talk about your company's 2011 performance and trends that may affect 2012 and beyond. You 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 of these subjects.
As we begin, let me remind you that some of the matters we discuss today are forward-looking and involve certain risks and uncertainties. You may refer to various filings with the SEC for 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 at www.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 in working to add new strengths. We are confident in our ability to create future value. I'd like to pause for a moment and pay tribute to a dear friend and director emeritus of Cincinnati Financial, who passed away earlier this month.
Bob Driehaus was instrumental in the development of The Cincinnati Insurance Company and the formation of Cincinnati Financial as our holding company. We owe many of our competitive advantages to him and our other early company leaders. Bob joined the company as a junior accountant in 1954 and retired in 1997 as our Chief Financial Officer. Though many of us remember him for creating our accounting and investment departments, he enjoyed telling stories about the many hats each company person wore in the early years. Bob did everything from keeping the first claims ledger to picking up associates at the bus stop and taking out trash at the end of the day. He started up the key punch area when that was our first informational technology, excuse me, effort.
Personally, I remember Bob most for modeling the values of hard work and resourcefulness to get the job done, as well as loyalty, thrift, and lack of ostentation. While that spirit of doing whatever it takes to bring success to the company continues today, our business is much larger and more complex. Four years ago, I started to work with the management team to focus our emphasis on a number of strategies to keep our company growing, including improving our technology and data management, as well as developing and recruiting associates with specialized expertise. Steve has continued to work on these goals with great success since I moved to the Chairman role at this time last year. We also promoted several talented officers who are bringing their energy and expertise to accomplishing our shared goals. I'd like to update you now on their areas.
In his first year as President and CEO, Steve has unified the company behind a single vision and set a shared goal of reaching $5 billion in direct written premium profitably by 2015. He has clearly communicated his vision and goals for the company, enlisting support and updating progress for our agents at sales meetings and for our associates at town hall meetings. Every associate knows what to do to bring success to the company in one quarter, one year, and in five years. Mike Sewell, our fifth CFO, joined us in May of last year. Financial assessments are a part of every major business decision, from reinsurance structures to expense control. Mike's accounting and financial statement expertise has supported our sales department in finding innovative alternatives to assist independent agencies in perpetuation planning.
Uniting the positions of General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Lisa Love facilitates the board's communications with management, investors, and others. She supports the board and management with timely and practical advice that continues to build the company's reputation for good governance, ethical business practices, and transparent financial disclosure. Teresa Cracas, our company's first Chief Risk Officer, leads a new area combining our staff underwriting, actuarial, and planning functions. These departments are providing the precise data and analysis we use to price our products and manage our business risk, helping all business units make the right decisions and move us forward. 2011 activities include recruiting expert associates such as our experienced predictive analytics officer and making improvements to our planning and budgeting processes. We found efficiencies by combining and consolidating on our efforts in business insurance. Under J.F.
Scheer's leadership, commercial lines, target markets, excess and surplus lines, and sales and marketing have enhanced their communication, coordination, and collaboration. Just this week, we added a highly experienced and accomplished marketing director. He will develop a strategic marketing plan and lead its implementation, focusing, integrating, and energizing marketing activities across all areas of our company. These changes should all contribute to the growth of our business, helping agents convey the value received by using a trusted insurance professional to develop a strong insurance program built on Cincinnati's policies and services. I'm thankful to our energetic group of executives, including those I've named and many more. Their work is building on the core values that our company's early leaders, people like Bob Driehaus, instilled into our corporate culture.
We are moving forward with focus, evaluating the right mix of technical resources and human resources to make solid plans for the future and pursue those plans without hesitation. I'd like to invite Cincinnati Financial Corporation President and CEO, Steve Johnston, to continue our discussion on your company's progress. Please welcome Steve.
Thank you, Ken. Thank you, Ken. I'm very excited to be here. It's so great to see so many shareholders, so many friends, so many first-time guests. It's great.
We're going to talk about three things here this morning. First, we're going to talk about 2011, a brief recap. We're going to move into a series of three-year slides that show really good, steady progress that we're making, and that continues into 2012. Thirdly, we're going to close with why you should be optimistic about your company's future. 2011 certainly did present some challenges to our company. The weather presented the two largest catastrophe losses in the history of The Cincinnati Insurance Companies. Low interest rates made it hard for our investment department to invest. We stayed focused on the fundamental tenets that make Cincinnati Cincinnati. That is, we appoint the best agents. We support those agents with local field representation, with our representatives working out of their homes with the ability and the authority to make decisions.
We back it up with great financial strength, great claim service, and investing for the long pull. Given our focus, 2011 was actually a very positive year. We move to the first slide where we look at underwriting results, the bar charts show our combined ratio for 2009, 2010, 2011, and the first quarter of 2012. Just as a reminder, if it's over 100, that's an underwriting loss. We had three years here shown with an underwriting loss. We moved that to a profit in 2012. The reason for the underwriting loss is unprecedented catastrophe losses. We look at 2011, we had 13.3 points of the 109.2 in catastrophe losses. The previous largest year was 6.8 points, nearly double. What we focus on is the red line, what we can control, the non-cat or core underwriting results.
Here we've seen tremendous progress over the last three years as it's declined from 98.8 to 96.7 to 95.9, and now down to 88 in the first quarter of 2012, an overall profit of 99.1%. Our claims associates, they really got out there and delivered on the promise. We had over 33,000 claims of catastrophe nature last year. They settled over 90% of it. They did it in Cincinnati style. They did it in such a way that we're actually now seeing favorable development that I think comes from handling all those claims with your own associates. I'd like right now for all the claims associates, either current or retired, to please stand up and let's give them a recognition. I'd particularly like to recognize Marty Mullen for his leadership. It was quite a year, Marty, thank you.
The only thing better than underwriting profit is growth in underwriting profit. Here we see a nice trend in growth from where we were, minus 3% in 2009, up to plus 2, up to plus 5. That continues with plus 8% in the first quarter. That's the most growth, highest percentage growth in the first quarter since 2006. That has been fueled by new business. Here again, you see three years of positive growth in new business. $437 million in last year of 2011 is an all-time record. That was fueled by $41 million in growth from new agents that were appointed since 2010. They contributed about $41 million of that $437 million. Recognizing the importance of agency appointments, this chart shows the number of agency appointments. You can see that it's going up. It continues into this year.
Far this year, we have a goal of 130, and we've already appointed 56 new agencies just in the first quarter. Last year, a quarter of those new appointments came in the new states of Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, Connecticut, and Oregon. I think it also leads to our expense and our service. We grew the number of field associates by 4% since 2009. Over that same period of time, we've actually reduced home office due to our technology advancements, and driving that, we reduced the number of contractors we use by 30%. All that culminated in written premium growth that we can see again, positive trends ending with over $3 billion of net written premium at the end of 2011. That also continues into 2012. Life insurance also contributed. It is very core.
As you can see from the slide, we're now over $78.6 billion in life in force. They're core to our operations, and in fact, last year, they were profitable to the position that they could upload or upstream $25 million in dividends to the parent. All the work in growth, all the work in frugality has resulted in a reduction in our expense ratio. We've always had a culture of frugality. You throw in that the reduction in expense, and we've dropped the expense ratio from 32.8% in 2009 to 32.2% last year to 31.6%. We've got a goal of getting that below 30% by the year 2015. I think we have that history of frugality. We kind of have a saying around here that the only time we let loose of a nickel is to get a tighter grip on it.
If you think about the potential, one point on the loss ratio improves our operating earnings by $31 million. A 5% increase in investment income only generates $26 million. Every point that we can shave off of this expense ratio goes right to the bottom line. We've taken the cash that we've made, and we've given it to the investment department to invest, and boy, have they done a great job with it. You know it's been a tough market. It's been a low-rate investment world that they live in, but they've taken the cash, and they've actually grown investment income. Each year, starting in 2009 with $501 million, we're up to $525 million. They've done it by investing in high quality investments, particularly high quality dividend-paying stocks with the propensity to grow that investment income.
That investment income from dividends has grown by 5%, which has offset a pretty flat level of investment income from investments. Nice growth from the investment department. Not only do they grow income, they invest in stocks that appreciate. This shows our unrealized gains, another positive trend where we've grown the unrealized gains by nearly $700 million just since the end of 2009. With $1.7 billion in unrealized gains, think about it, that's almost enough to support a $3 billion company just with the unrealized gains. Good appreciation. That is summarized in the consolidated assets also going up. A nice positive trend that is now over $12 billion in invested assets. The Cincinnati Insurance Company has never been constrained for growth for lack of financial strength, and that is continuing today with strong growth in the investments. We have a rock-solid balance sheet.
The hallmark of any balance sheet is the reserve position. Here you can see we've continued to increase our reserves. We've increased them steadily. We have a very consistent approach to our reserving practices. It contributed 9.4 points in favorable development to the combined ratio in 2011. If you look at our Form 10-K that we file with the SEC, we've got 23 years in a row with favorable development. We think that that is unprecedented and is the foundation of our balance sheet. That all drives our policyholder surplus. Here you can see good growth in the policyholder surplus. We're up over $3.8 billion, and that is after over this period of time contributing over a half a billion, over $500 million, up to the parent company.
I think particularly impressive in a year when particularly impressive that we're able to grow it in such a strong catastrophe year. If we look to the consolidated equity here, this is taking those dividends up from the public company. We have an additional $1+ billion in cash and marketable securities there. Again, we've been able to grow that steadily from $4.7 billion at the end of 2009 to now over $5.2 billion. If we divide that by the shares, that's every shareholder's piece for every share. This is book value per share, and I guess this is the point I was going to make.
Even in a tough year, when we had the two largest catastrophe losses in the history of the company, we were able to grow book value from year-end 2010 at $30.79 to $31.03 at the end of 2011, and already 3.3% growth up to $32.07. Strong growth in our book value per share. I want to turn to the next one. All right. It took a little while to get to this one, it's a good one, I'll tell you. This is our dividends. We are one of 10 companies that have increased their dividends every year for over 50 years. 51 years for us. We show that from 1980 on up, over that period of time, if you look at those 10 companies, the compound annual growth rate in the dividends, we are the highest with 11.7% compound average growth rate.
It has tailed off a little bit here in the more recent years, we support a yield right now that's 4.5%, and if you think about it, the 10-year treasury is under 2%. If you're going to see one slide, this is my favorite. I'm sure why you're here. This shows total shareholder return for Cincinnati Financial, the S&P 500, and S&P's index of P&C companies, 27 of them in the index. It shows total shareholder return from each of the dates until yesterday. This first block here shows that from the end of the year 2011, about a third of a year, four months, your company, total shareholder return, 18.8%. That is higher than the S&P 500 and the S&P's index of P&C companies.
If we go back another year from year-end 2010, now we've got a year and about a third, assuming that you reinvest the dividends, again, we're in first place, up 20.4%, beating both the S&P and the S&P's index of P&C companies. If you go back to 2009, same picture. We're up 53.5%. $100 invested in Cincinnati would result in $153.50. That's more than you would have got from the S&P 500 or the S&P's index of P&C companies. Didn't really want to put a clean sweep in here, I included 2008 here. Again, we've got strong performance at up 47.9%, beating the index of P&C companies, but behind the S&P 500, which was at 66.7%. I wanted to take a little longer approach, go back 10 years and a third. 10 years and this stub year. Whoa. I like that slide.
We're at 54.2%, again, ahead of both the S&P 500 and the index. If we go back 15 years in the stub, you've tripled your money, up 199.8% with total shareholder return, again, far exceeding the S&P 500 and the S&P's index of P&C companies. Your company has performed well. It has been a top performer in terms of returning money to you, and we think that you should be optimistic going forward that this will continue. The reason is, one, we've got a nice short-term trend. The fourth quarter and the first quarter are going in the right direction. As Ken mentioned, we have very well-articulated goals. Every associate knows that our goals are to get to $5 billion in premium by 2015.
Our goals are to do that profitably with a combined ratio of 95% or better, that we're going to lower our expense ratio, that we're going to continue to invest in the S&P 500 and outperform the S&P 500 with our own investment portfolio. That should generate a value creation ratio of 12%-15%. Those are our goals. We've had meetings. We've described them to every single associate. They all have goal cards. I'm looking forward to this week. We're going to get out there and show them how we did in the first quarter on their goals, and we'll just continue to reinforce that. Well-articulated goals. Everyone knows where we're going, and we're all marching together. I think even more importantly than that, one should look at our management team, and one should look at our business model.
If you look at the business model, it has been successful since our founding. That is, appoint the best agent, put our field representatives out in the field, give them the authority, the ability to make decisions, support them with great financial strength, great claim service, invest for the long term. It is a winning formula. That is being executed by an experienced and superior management team that I can assure you is working feverishly every single day to improve. With that, I thank you for your time, I thank you for your support, and I thank you for your continued ownership of the Cincinnati Financial Corporation. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Steve. I think you see with Steve's enthusiasm and that of the team why we believe that the future is bright for our company. 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 have their shares held in book entry form instead of tracking all your paper certificates. Please keep that in mind. We want to make it easy for you to invest in our company, also to make it easy to reinvest your dividends and compound your growth. As Steve mentioned, you saw the chart on the 51-year history of our dividend increases. We're so proud of the fact that we have been, again, in 2011, an S&P 500 dividend aristocrat and a Mergent's Dividend Achiever.
Our record is matched by only a handful of a few 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 28th day of April, 2012, 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 87% 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 98% 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 95% of the shares present or represented and entitled to vote at the meeting were voted in favor of adopting the Cincinnati Financial Corporation 2012 Stock Compensation Plan. Respectfully submitted, Molly Grimm, Chuck Hartline, Tom Hogan, Todd Pendery, and Blake Slater.
Thank you, Molly. It appears all directors have been elected and all proposals have been approved. The inspectors of election will furnish this to the secretary with a written report of the final vote count with respect to the matters voted on today and to be included in the minutes of this meeting. We'll announce the final results once they are certified early next week. At this time, we'd like to welcome your questions. We want to learn more about your interest in our business. We have two microphones set up in front. If anyone would like to ask any questions, I would appreciate if you would come up to the microphone so everyone can hear your question. I would also like to have Steve Johnston join me to respond.
Good morning. That was an excellent presentation. It was a lot of good news. My name is Ellen Dorley. I am an insured, a shareholder, and a member of the Jones family. My question is two-part. It has to do with dividends. You've been paying them over a long time. Over that history, the tax treatment of dividends has changed a lot. Do you have any expectation of a change in the way the dividends are taxed? What might you do differently in the way you pay the dividend? The second part of the question has to do with the attractiveness of the stock because of the dividend, and perhaps more shorter-term owners of the stock. If the tax treatment is changed, do you think you'll see more trading of the stock? Do my questions make sense?
Yeah. I think we've done a lot of thinking about that. Either one of us can answer the question. I'll start off. I think, first of all, as you said, the tax consequences of dividend payments have changed over time. We believe that as a profitable company, we need to return capital to our shareholders. There are multiple ways to do that. One is you can repurchase shares for the treasury. Secondly, you can return dividends to shareholders on a quarterly basis. We prefer to return them to shareholders. We understand that this could change the dynamics of our investor, I believe that we want to reward people that have an interest in our company, which means you do that to shareholders on a quarterly dividend basis.
If we repurchase shares, sometimes that is the right thing to do, especially if you can buy the stock at lower than book value. If we have the choice, we'd prefer to pay the dividends because we're, as I said earlier, paying them to current shareholders and not to people that want to sell our stock. As far as changing the policy, depending on how things go, whether we might get a different shareholder base, I mean, that's a good question, and I think we would have to see how that all plays out. I think at the end of the day, if there are changes, hopefully they're going to be temporary because every corporation needs capital.
Every corporation needs to have interested investors, you don't want to take capital out of the industry by penalizing people to the point where they say, "I can't afford," or, "It's not the right thing to do to buy the stock." I think that's one thing that we're just going to have to monitor. We are so proud of our 51-year history, if you've seen in Steve's chart, we have done everything we can to increase the dividend on an annual basis, even though it has slowed because of the tough times we just experienced over the recession that we've been through. That is something we're so proud of. We're going to do everything in our power to continue that.
I think with what you've heard today, with the plans we have for 2012, we believe we're going to be able to continue that and possibly pick that up at a little greater pace in the future. Steve, would you like to add to that?
I don't think I can add anything to that. That was a phenomenal answer. I guess the only thing I would just encourage you, if you agree, let your representatives know that capital has already been taxed once. The dividend tax is the second tax. If you agree, let them know that, and let them know how you feel.
Thank you. Any further questions? Well, seeing none, I think we thank you for coming to today's meeting. We thank you for your interest, and I would request a motion to adjourn.
Moved.
Do we have a second? We have a second. Thank you. Before we stand adjourned, one thing to remind you about is that refreshments are still available, and you are welcome to tour the museum's exhibit, "Monet and Giverny: Landscapes of Reflection," beginning at 10:30 this morning. You may tour the entire art museum once it opens at 11:00 A.M. Thank you very much for your presence today. We really enjoyed it. Again, thank you for the interest in Cincinnati Financial.