Travelers Companies Foundation Inc history

In 1853 Alexander Wilkin, the secretary of the territory, and The St Paul's first and youngest president, approached his neighbors, George and John Farrington, with the idea of starting a Saint Paul, Minnesota-based insurance company.

In February 1854 the company issued its first policy, a mutual policy for $800.

The company paid its first claim in 1855 after a fire spread from a bakery to an adjacent row of offices.

A period of stagnation occurred starting in 1861, during the Civil War.

Public Company Incorporated: 1863 as The Travelers Insurance CompanyEmployees: 35,000Assets: $56.75 billionStock Exchanges: New York Pacific London

The Travelers Insurance Company was founded in 1864 by James Batterson, a stonecutter.

He was succeeded by James C. Burbank, the company's first full-time president, in April 1865.

A shareholder-elected board voted to pay semiannual dividends, and in July 1867 the company issued its first stock dividend, of $1.50 per share.

Employer’s liability, a predecessor of workers’ compensation, was first sold in the United States by a British company in 1885.

In buying the Baltimore-based USF&G, a firm founded in 1896, The St Paul propelled itself from the 13th to the eighth largest property and casualty insurer in the nation.

In 1897 Travelers wrote its first automobile policy.

By the time Batterson died in 1901, Travelers also offered health, liability, and automotive insurance, at a time when many insurers still restricted themselves to a single line of insurance.

Before 1902 the company’s agents were responsible for selling policies, recruiting agents, and for performing administrative chores.

In 1903 the first class of 12 agents began training at the industry’s first vocational school, started by Travelers.

The San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906 took a heavy toll on The St Paul's new product development plans, however.

He started his career at Travelers as an office boy for J. G. Batterson, and was soon promoted to actuary, and, in 1907, secretary of the company.

Group insurance, which would later make up a substantial segment of Travelers’s business, was introduced in 1913, written for the employees of the Ohio Electric Railway Company.

In 1917 The St Paul covered the loss of 260 vessels, totaling more than $4 million, most of which was repaid by Germany over 50 years.

After World War I, in May 1919, the Travelers introduced a comprehensive aviation insurance program which included life, public liability, workers’ compensation, and passenger accident policies.

Travelers also published one of the first aviation-safety publications, Airplanes and Safety, in 1920.

The St Paul's leadership decided, therefore, that a liability company was needed, and in 1926 a subsidiary, St Paul Mercury Indemnity Company, was formed.

When the stock market crashed in 1929, many institutional investors were ruined.

One such incident occurred in 1933, when a policyholder sent a letter to the company threatening to kill himself unless Travelers agreed to loan him one-third of his policy’s face value for three years at 5%. The letter gave instructions to reply in the public notices section of The New York Times.

After serving as The St Paul's president for 27 years, Frederic Bigelow became chairman in 1938, and Charles F. Codere became The St Paul's fifth president.

In 1948 Codere became chairman, and A. B. Jackson was elected The St Paul's new president.

Weill was born to Polish immigrants and was the first in his family to earn a college degree, graduating from Cornell University in 1955.

1956: *Established a weather research center.

In 1957 a building was dedicated to an education center, and a dormitory, Denniston Hall, named for the first instructor housed the students.

In 1958 Travelers opened its first suburban neighborhood branch office, near Atlanta, Georgia.

In the ten years after the war, accidents increased 30%, and the cost of bodily injury claims rose 86%. Travelers began losing money on its automobile liability lines until 1959, when the company began basing insurance rates on a driver’s safety record.

Travelers introduced its logo—a red umbrella to symbolize protection—in 1960.

1961: *Introduced a new coverage option for electronic data processing.

By 1964 Western Life sales had more than doubled.

In 1965 the company was renamed The Travelers Corporation.

In 1967 The Travelers entered the mutual funds business when it opened the Travelers Equities Fund.

The company’s diversification served as a buffer in 1968 when property and casualty underwritings lost $64 million.

In 1969 Sterling Tooker resigned as president and CEO of The Travelers Corporation and was succeeded by Roger C. Wilkins.

In 1970 St Paul Guardian Insurance Company was formed to market personal lines of insurance.

In 1971 Morrison H. Beach became The Travelers’ president and Roger Wilkins became chairman.

Two years later St Paul Investment Management Company, an investment management firm, was started, and in 1973 St Paul Life Insurance Company, whose purpose was to market life insurance through independent agents representing St Paul Fire and Marine, was formed.

In 1974 The Travelers restructured its departments, splitting the property and casualty division along personal and commercial lines.

In 1980 Chairman Drake refocused mainly on insurance-related businesses.

Morrison Beach became chairman, and remained CEO until 1981.

Following his retirement, he concentrated on his longtime philanthropic endeavours, including the National Academy Foundation, a network of career academies for high school students, which he had founded in 1982.

Under a new president, Robert J. Haugh, these divestitures were completed by 1984, when The St Paul's net loss was $210 million.

Instead he started over, buying the Commercial Credit division of Control Data Corporation in 1986.

In 1987 Travelers suffered a substantial second-quarter loss of $337 million because of doubtful real estate investments it had made in the Southwest.

In 1988 Travelers began cost-cutting measures through staff reductions; 465 employees were dismissed, another 420 left voluntarily.

In 1989, however, the travelers lost about $18 million on its HMOs, and sold five HMOs for $1 each.

On May 1, 1990, Haugh retired and was replaced by The St Paul's new chairman, president, and CEO, Douglas W. Leatherdale, who continued the company's strategy for an increasing presence in the European market.

The new company, using the name Primerica, acquired Travelers Insurance and repurchased Shearson from American Express during 1992–93.

In May 1993 The St Paul launched a restructuring of its United States underwriting businesses (known collectively as St Paul Fire and Marine Insurance), partly in response to the losses of the previous year.

In 1996 Weill expanded Travelers Group when he bought the casualty and property insurance businesses of the Aetna Life and Casualty Company.

In October 1997 he gained widespread attention for Travelers Group’s $9 billion purchase of Salomon Inc., parent company of the prestigious Salomon Brothers investment bank.

When the proposed merger was announced in April 1998, the news stunned the financial industry, but the decision was in step with Weill’s reputation as a corporate visionary who was as savvy as he was fearless.

Thus, the merger was able to be completed, and in 1999 Weill became cochairman and co-CEO of Citigroup, then the largest financial services company in the world.

By 2000 Weill was the sole chairman and CEO of Citigroup.

2001 The St Paul's losses stemming from the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 total $941 million.

The new financial services conglomerate came under Weill’s leadership and assumed the red umbrella logo, retaining it even after spinning off, in 2002, the property and casualty insurance business to form a new, publicly traded firm called Travelers Property Casualty Corp.

The St Paul and Travelers merged on April 1, 2004, to form one of the largest property casualty insurers and financial services firms: The St Paul Travelers Companies, Inc.

In late 2005 Fishman succeeded Lipp as chairman.

In March 2006 the Wall Street Journal reported that St Paul Travelers was in the early stages of discussing a takeover of Zurich Financial Services, one of Europe's largest insurers and a firm that was also a major United States property and casualty insurer.

In 2009 Weill and his wife were awarded the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy, named for Andrew Carnegie, the millionaire industrialist and philanthropist.

2016: *Created the Early Severity Predictor, the first predictive model to help injured employees avoid chronic pain and opioid use.

2017: *Introduced ZoneCheckSM, a first-of-its-kind online tool to help customers identify areas surrounding a job site that could be affected by vibrations from heavy equipment.

2018: Offered a new stand-alone cyber insurance product for organizations of all sizes in the United Kingdom and Ireland to provide liability and first-party cover for losses from cyber attacks.

2019: Established a new comprehensive Life Sciences practice, offering insurance and risk management solutions across the fields of pharmaceuticals, medical devices and digital health.