Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions). Your first question comes from Dan Schlemmer.
Dan Schlemmer - Fox-Pitt Kelton
Good morning. Hello.
Kenneth William Stecher
Good morning.
Dan Schlemmer - Fox-Pitt Kelton
Hi sorry, I wasn't I think I heard my name in there wrong or something. Question on the Fifth Third, I just want to make sure how did you write. You are saying, as of today you don't own any Fifth Third is that what I heard correctly?
Steven Johnston
That is correct.
Dan Schlemmer - Fox-Pitt Kelton
Okay. And on the personal lines, the 11% up this quarter, is there... you reference the rate changes. Is that really what's driving in and can you break it out into volume versus rate change. And then is there anything else in there worst that's really driving the 11% is obviously your best performance on personal lines in quite a while, so just want to sort of understand where that's coming from?
Jacob Scherer, Jr.
This is J.F. The new business that we're receiving is concentrated on a lot of our new appointments. We increased our new business writings in personal lines by about $3.8 million, and agencies that we've appointed in 2007 and 2008 are simultaneously with that and accordance with our models and curing for personal lines we've improved our competitiveness on the better highly weighted scores and we're gradually raising rates on the poorer scores.
So that's resulted in some better results from us. And the agencies that we've had on board previous to 2007 did not broke-even in terms of the new business we were at this year versus last. Like the signs that we're seeing in January, we had a good January as far as new business is concerned in personal lines. We will continue to tweak our rates based on the various tiering, but right now we're seeing some of the benefits of changes we've made.
Dan Schlemmer - Fox-Pitt Kelton
And just staying on the personal lines the rates in particular, can you give us a little more characterization of the rate changes that were made, is it generally you are going up all over, down all over, is it more targeted and that part of the question I was really thinking geographically. And then obviously you're changing your spread with the tiering, but really just thinking the aggregate rate level are you seeing mostly up or down and where are you seeing that?
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