In a little over 80 years, State Farm has grown from a small, farming-community-based mutual auto
insurer to one of the world's largest financial institutions. Despite this tremendous growth, our founder's
original philosophy of insurance coverage at a fair price, coupled with fair claim settlement has remained
the cornerstone of our success.

It began in 1921, when a successful Illinois area farmer named George J. Mecherle (pronounced Ma-herl),
was forced to change careers due to his wife's health concerns. The couple moved to the city of
Bloomington, and Mecherle took a job as an insurance salesman. He liked the work, and quickly became
successful, but he did not agree with the fact that farmers were charged the same auto insurance rates
as non-farmers even though they were consistently less accident-prone.

When he suggested a better way to sell insurance, his employer laughed and said, "If you think you've
got such a good idea, why don't you start your own company?" So he did.

In 1922 Mecherle opened his own firm, State Farm Insurance, as a mutual automobile insurance company
owned by its policyholders. This revolutionized the insurance business by introducing low-risk rates,
safe-driver discounts, and semi-annual payment plans.

Today State Farm Insurance Companies(r) is one of the 25 largest corporations on the Fortune 500.
State Farm's 17,000 agents and 68,000 employees serve over 74 million auto, fire, life, and health
policies in the United States and Canada, and more than 1.8 million bank accounts.

The highly principled mission, vision and values of State Farm today are still those of George J. Mecherle.