Who Owns Travelers?

James G. Batterson was a Hartford stone contractor who discovered accident insurance while traveling in England in 1859, when a railway ticket included coverage for injury or death during the journey. He raised $500,000 in capital and secured a Connecticut charter on June 17, 1863. The Travelers Insurance Company issued its first regular policy on April 5, 1864, after banker James Bolter famously paid a two-cent premium to insure his walk home from the post office.

The brand grew by being first to several products. Travelers issued what is regarded as the first automobile insurance policy in the United States in 1897, written for Gilbert J. Loomis of Westfield, Massachusetts. It later wrote early accident coverage for commercial airline passengers and provided accident insurance for the Apollo astronauts in 1969. The red umbrella was adopted as the brand symbol in the 1960s and became one of the most recognized logos in American financial services, anchored in later decades by national advertising built around the mark.

The 1990s and 2000s took the brand through a series of corporate homes. Primerica acquired Travelers in December 1993 and renamed itself Travelers Group. The 1998 merger of Travelers Group and Citicorp created Citigroup, and the property casualty operations were spun off to public shareholders in a 2002 IPO. On April 1, 2004, Travelers Property Casualty merged with St. Paul Companies, the Minnesota insurer founded in 1853, in a stock-for-stock deal that produced the country's second largest commercial insurer at the time. The combined company took the name The Travelers Companies in 2007, reacquiring the red umbrella trademark from Citigroup the same year, and joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 2009.

Under the modern parent, the brand has expanded into cyber insurance through the January 2024 acquisition of Corvus Insurance for approximately $435 million and deepened its UK presence through the 2017 purchase of Simply Business. In FY2025 the company wrote a record $44.4 billion in net premiums under the Travelers name, and earned premiums reached $43.9 billion.