Empowering Employees Brown & Brown is poised for success with well-defined targets and strong leaders who employ proven management systems and techniques to achieve its goals. Employees throughout all levels of the Company clearly understand the Company’s objectives and are empowered to contribute positively and reap financial rewards for their hard work toward bottom-line profitability. In fact, approximately 70% of employees own Brown & Brown stock, creating a sense of ownership and a substantial vested interest in the Company’s profitability. Much of the Company’s success stems from Brown & Brown’s hands-off approach in setting the bar high and allowing each profit center to draw on its resourcefulness and ingenuity to achieve these goals. Although the Company’s 115 profit centers operate independently, each shares a common vision of profitable growth achieved by providing clients superior products and quality service in the most cost-effective manner possible. Collaboration among the individual profit centers through information sharing and friendly competition has led to increased profitability across the board, as the Company’s mature profit centers once again achieved the highest pre-tax margins of all publicly owned brokers in the industry. Achieving Aggressive Goals By concentrating on sales and other activities that directly affect bottom-line results, Brown & Brown accomplished two of its most ambitious goals: achieving an increase of at least 15% in earnings every quarter and continually raising pre-tax margins with a view toward reaching our current goal of 28% by year-end 2002. Earnings in 2001 continued to grow steadily, culminating in a 67% increase in pre-tax income over 2000. Through internal growth and acquisitions, the Company has more than doubled its level of premiums written, which now exceeds $3 billion; and Brown & Brown’s established profit centers posted pro forma pre-tax margins of 27.9% – a tremendous achievement, given that the average industry pre-tax margin continues to hover well below 20%.