      service excellence The Hartford has won record-breaking numbers  of awards from DALBAR, Inc., an independent research organization known for monitoring and measur- ing service excellence in the finan- cial services industry.  has awarded The Hartford numerous awards, including an unprecedented nine straight awards for annuity service. We’ve won four consecutive DALBAR awards in individual life and we’re the only life insurance company to ever win this award. We’ve also won awards two years in a row for our retirement plans and mutual fund service.  We’ve made service excellence an integral part of our culture because we want to keep our customers satisfied. Outstanding service helps us retain the customers we have and win new ones. Another way The Hartford maintains its strong market pres- ence is by pushing the boundaries of  technology-based business solutions . In 2004, for the first time, we used grid computing technology to assemble a “virtual supercomputer” from existing computing platforms. The Hartford has one of the largest grid computing environments in the life and annuity industry. In 2004, The Hartford won  DALBAR awards for: Grid computing technology provides great scalability and resilience in analytical modeling, which in turn affords  The Hartford tremendous flexibility and power in our research and production capabilities. The analytical capabilities facilitated by grid computing also give us the capacity to provide a higher level of support to the hedging strategy that helps us manage risk for our market-leading variable annuities. This results in reduced costs and a robust, more efficient hedging platform. Our initial success with grid computing established  The Hartford as an industry leader in making effective use  of this technology. We anticipate more opportunities to lever- age grid computing across the organization. 15 9th consecutive DALBAR annuity service award •Financialintermediary  service (third) •Retirementplansservice  (second straight) •Mutualfundsservice  (second straight) •Lifeinsuranceservice(fourth straight, and we remain the  only company to ever win four  in this category) •Annuityservice(ninthstraight, and the only company to win every year since inception  of the awards)