Town & Country Insurance, a Webster City, Iowa-based agency, is owned by the local First State Bank organization. During the last 10 years, Town & Country Insurance has grown into the largest insurance agency in the country affiliated with a $100 to $300 million asset size bank. Acquisitions have added substantial growth to the agency. Additional growth has been generated by marketing campaigns targeted toward the Iowa turkey industry and crop insurance. I'm a farm kid from southwest Iowa who graduated from Iowa State University with a degree in agriculture business with a finance specialization. After college, I entered the banking and insurance industries with a bank in Gowrie, Iowa. That small, family-owned bank had an insurance affiliate–and I joined First State Bank and Town & Country Insurance in 1984. Since then, I've been involved with managing First State Bank's insurance operations. I relinquished my other bank responsibilities and began working full time in our growing insurance agency in 1996. As agency manager and executive vice president, I manage a substantial book of farm, crop and commercial insurance business, which helps me keep in touch with our carriers and changes to our product offerings. As a member of the First State Bank board of directors, I also act as the agency's conduit for information to and from the bank management and our agency staff. One of my primarily responsibilities is acquisition recruitment. We average one agency acquisition about every 12 to 15 months, so much of my time is spent negotiating agency purchases and managing the merger process once the deal is closed. We have completed eight agency acquisitions during the last 8 years. Only one of the agency's four offices is located within a bank office. The remaining three locations are "insurance-only" offices. Webster City is the main location. There are full-service branch locations in Eagle Grove, Clarion and Story City, all in Iowa. In the fall of this year, another bank and agency branch will open in Fort Dodge, Iowa. As an independently operated department of the First State Bank of Webster City, Town & Country is managed by a five-member agency management team and four department managers. During the past decade, Town & Country has grown from a staff of three people to an agency with more than 35 employees. We accomplished this through our aggressive acquisition program as well as consistent organic growth. In 1997, agency revenues were less than $700,000. In 2008, our revenues exceeded $4 million. Residing in a rural part of north central Iowa, Town & Country is not able to specialize in any particular product line. To be successful, we must be proficient in and market a wide range of products. This product diversity makes staff training an ongoing challenge, but also protects our agency revenue during the hard and soft market cycles. An approximate breakdown for our 2008 revenues is 35 percent crop, 25 percent personal, 20 percent commercial, 11 percent life/health/employee benefits and 9 percent farm.