Customers

Allstate has a responsibility to a wide range of stakeholders. We are a company of more than 70,000 employees, agency owners and agency staff, and nearly more than 117,000 registered shareholders, and we help individuals in approximately 17 million households countrywide. This commitment is expressed through a set of policies and practices that guide our efforts to balance the interests of the people who depend on us: our customers, associates, shareholders and the communities in which we operate. Everything we do in the marketplace is guided by The Good Hands® Promise.

Customer Loyalty

Allstate's Shared Vision is based on putting the customer at the center of our work. We set a high standard for loyalty at Allstate. Customers should be sufficiently satisfied with our service that they will not only renew, but also refer us to their friends and neighbors. Allstate continues to take aggressive actions to improve customer loyalty. Allstate modified the savings plan for its employees so the incentive portion of the company's contribution is based on customer loyalty. There is more rigor on service standards by strengthening customer service expectations for Allstate leaders, employees and agencies. The needs and interests of customers will drive the company's decisions about how it's organized, how it conducts and uses research, spends money, accelerates the development and delivery of products and services and improves pricing.

Access to Products & Services

Another form of choice involves the many options in service and access channels that Allstate provides its customers. Offering a range of access-local agency owners, toll-free phone number, Web sites, banks and investment broker-dealers-allows Allstate to serve customers how, when and where they choose. A one-product-fits-all, same-service-for-anyone approach no longer suits a diverse and ever-changing market; industries must serve individuals, not broad categories.

Pricing

Allstate's goal is to deliver good value to our customers in the form of products, services and relationships. Offering competitive prices through a range of pricing structures is key to keeping our Good Hands® Promise.

Insurance is one of the world's most difficult products to price. Companies have to price it before they know its true cost over time-which can vary widely from customer to customer, based on personal and environmental factors unknown at the time of sale. Allstate's pricing model does not consider ethnicity, race, nationality or income. Our goal is to match price to risk as accurately as we can, and our pricing model contains millions of price points.

Ultimately, insurance rates are determined by potential risk. When a customer requests an auto insurance quote, for example, several factors are taken into consideration. Driving record is one of them. But since driving records only paint a partial picture of the risk presented, we also consider the kind of car being driven, how much it's driven, and other factors to determine an appropriate premium. Over the years, the insurance industry has developed increasingly sophisticated systems to tailor auto rates, including the use of information from a customer's credit history. Using credit history enables us to offer lower premiums to many customers who otherwise would pay more for their insurance. The overriding principle is for those with a higher risk to pay more, and those with a smaller risk to pay less.

Customer Privacy and Confidentiality

Customers entrust Allstate with confidential personal information on a daily basis, and they expect us to safeguard this information and use it responsibly. Consistent with Allstate's Code of Ethics, employees must follow all appropriate physical, electronic and procedural safeguards to protect consumer information. We do not sell customer information. We respect their privacy and have created strict policies and processes to help ensure we maintain high standards for data security, wherever Allstate or our suppliers operate. These measures help protect customers from identity theft.

All employees are responsible for protecting, securing, retaining, and destroying Allstate information in accordance with company or business unit requirements. This includes protecting information from unauthorized access, modification, duplication, destruction or disclosure, whether accidental or intentional. This is true of all information created or used in connection with the transaction of Allstate business, regardless of how it is created, distributed or stored, in accordance with Allstate's IT usage policy.

Allstate's privacy statement covers how we gather, use and protect information about our customers.