Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Sure. (Operator Instructions). Your first question that comes from the line of Mr. Michael Phillips from Stifel Nicolaus. You may proceed, sir.
Michael Phillips - Stifel Nicolaus & Company, Inc.
Thank you. Good morning everybody.
Frederick Eppinger
Hey Michael.
Michael Phillips - Stifel Nicolaus & Company, Inc.
Hey, couple of questions. I guess first and this is something I Marita passed on in her remarks and I would say that is going to hit on us a little bit with Michigan. I think a lot of your... a good amount of your growth I think in auto, I am talking personal auto now, has come from your pretty consistent rate stance. You guys always talk about trying to take rate changes a little bit ahead of inflation and you have done that pretty consistently.
And you got some good growth this quarter again. I guess I want to hear you talk a little bit more about how concerned you might be about that regulatory environment there and what that might mean for future actions in terms of rate increases given the significance you have in that state for personal auto?
Frederick Eppinger
Yeah, I mean, obviously we anticipated some of the conversations that are going in Michigan for a long time because we were involved, we have conversations with the Commissioner's Office there obviously and the administration. I actually feel relatively good about where I think it's going to unfold. I mean I believe that there is some issues in Michigan given the economy. But because we anticipated it... a lot of the rate increases we took just recently went in. So we basically just put in a number of rate increases in the last few weeks.
So financially it's fine. But more importantly I think that I believe that we can constructively work with Michigan on some issues. One of the interesting things about Michigan as you know is that it's had a recession for last two or three years. It's not something that just happened. So a lot of these issues we have been wrestling with them for a number of quarters. And one of the things obviously is the affordability there. And there are things about Michigan for instance, it's the only state of the union that mandates some limited medical projection. That makes policies more expensive there which I think we can now have the real conversation to change some of these.
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