The Travelers Companies, Inc.

What does Travelers own?

Travelers owns a group of property casualty insurance subsidiaries that underwrite commercial, personal, and specialty coverage, along with Simply Business in the UK, Corvus Insurance in cyber, Travelers Canada, and a majority-owned Brazilian joint venture. Its invested assets exceeded $101 billion at the end of FY2025.

Is Travelers publicly traded?

Yes. The Travelers Companies trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker TRV and is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Its shares are widely held by institutional investors.

Who founded Travelers?

The company's predecessors were founded by Alexander Wilkin and 16 businessmen who established St. Paul Fire and Marine in 1853 in St. Paul, Minnesota, and by James G. Batterson, who founded The Travelers Insurance Company in Hartford, Connecticut in 1864.

Where is Travelers headquartered?

Travelers is headquartered in New York, New York, USA. Hartford, Connecticut remains a major employment center reflecting the company's origins, and the parent corporation is incorporated in Minnesota.

How many brands does Travelers own?

Travelers operates primarily under its single master brand and red umbrella mark. Its named operating brands include Travelers Canada, Simply Business in the UK, and Corvus Insurance in cyber underwriting.

Who owns Travelers?

The company is publicly traded and has no controlling shareholder. Institutional investors including Vanguard and BlackRock hold the largest stakes, each in the high single digits of outstanding shares.

How large is Travelers?

For FY2025, Travelers reported $48.8 billion in revenue, $6.29 billion in net income, record net written premiums of $44.4 billion, and more than 30,000 employees. It is one of the largest property casualty insurers in the United States.

The company has two roots. The older is St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company, founded March 5, 1853 in St. Paul, Minnesota by Alexander Wilkin, the territory's secretary, and 16 local businessmen. The founders wanted a local insurer so frontier merchants did not have to wait for claim payments from East Coast carriers. The company nearly failed in the Panic of 1857, reorganized as a stock company, and expanded nationally over the following century. In 1968 it formed a holding company, The St. Paul Companies.

The second root is The Travelers Insurance Company. Hartford stone contractor James G. Batterson encountered accident insurance sold with railway tickets on an 1859 trip to England. He raised $500,000 in capital, obtained a Connecticut charter on June 17, 1863, and issued the company's first policy on April 5, 1864. The famous founding anecdote is a two-cent premium Batterson quoted banker James Bolter to insure his walk home from the post office. Travelers went on to write the first auto insurance policy in the United States and, in 1969, accident coverage for the Apollo astronauts.

The late twentieth century scrambled Travelers' corporate identity. Financial services firm Primerica acquired Travelers in 1993 and took the Travelers name. Travelers Group bought Salomon Brothers in 1997, then merged with Citicorp in 1998 to form Citigroup. Citigroup spun off the property casualty operations as Travelers Property Casualty in a 2002 IPO.

The modern company formed on April 1, 2004, when St. Paul Companies and Travelers Property Casualty merged in a stock-for-stock deal that created the country's second largest commercial insurer at the time. The combined entity was renamed The Travelers Companies in February 2007 and reacquired the rights to the red umbrella trademark from Citigroup. It moved its headquarters to New York City, while Hartford remains a major employment center.

Recent acquisitions have been targeted capability buys rather than transformational deals. In 2017 Travelers acquired UK small-business insurance distributor Simply Business for approximately $490 million in enterprise value. In January 2024 it completed the purchase of cyber insurance managing general underwriter Corvus Insurance for approximately $435 million, adding AI-driven underwriting tools for cyber risk. Alan Schnitzer has served as CEO since 2015 and as Chairman since 2017.

Travelers is a regular on the Fortune 500, ranking near the top 100 by revenue in the 2025 edition, and appears on the Forbes Global 2000 list of the world's largest public companies. The company has been named to Fortune's World's Most Admired Companies list in the property and casualty category across multiple years.

The company has also been recognized for underwriting quality, appearing repeatedly in the Ward Group's Ward's 50 benchmark list of top-performing property casualty insurers. Its Travelers Championship PGA Tour event has won the tour's Players Choice award, a player-voted recognition of tournament quality.

Travelers' largest regulatory and public scrutiny themes concern claims and underwriting practices rather than headline scandals. The company has faced policyholder litigation typical of large insurers, including class actions over claims handling and vehicle total-loss valuations; these are generally settled or resolved without findings that change company operations.

The company's use of aerial imagery and data analytics to underwrite and non-renew homeowners policies drew press scrutiny and litigation in 2024 and 2025, part of an industry-wide debate over insurers using drone and satellite photos to assess roof condition and property risk. Travelers has said the tools improve claim speed and underwriting accuracy; regulators in several states have examined the practice without issuing adverse rulings against the company specifically.

Historically, Travelers carried substantial asbestos liabilities, and its 2004-era reserve strengthening for asbestos was among the largest in the industry at the time. Those exposures have since been managed through reserve charges and reinsurance. Catastrophe losses, rather than legal findings, remain the company's dominant public financial risk, with the January 2025 California wildfires alone producing roughly $1.7 billion in pre-tax catastrophe losses.