Kim: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of the Life at Travelers podcast and today, we’re diving into the history of Travelers with my guest here, Bob Nighan, and Bob, we were prepping this bio here. You and I were chatting before. Prepare yourselves, folks. Tons of accolades here, Bob. I’m so impressed and I can’t wait to introduce you to our guests here but, thanks for coming. Thanks for being on the show.

Bob: My pleasure. Happy to be here.

Kim: Alright, I’ll kick us off here. Bob is Vice President – Risk Manager, Corporate Insurance and Risk Management at Travelers and has been with the company almost 40 years. Bob has served in his current position through the 2002 spin out of Travelers Property Casualty from Citigroup and the subsequent 2004 merger between Travelers Property Casualty and the St. Paul Companies. Bob began his career at Travelers in Bond, where, from 1988 to 2002, he was an underwriter. While in Bond, he was responsible for the creation of two industry-first insurance products: SafeWeb online banking insurance and Identity Fraud Expense insurance, the latter of which has been widely imitated across the industry. On the subject of identity theft insurance, Bob has been interviewed extensively in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and numerous other print, television and radio news programs. Bob serves on the Board of Directors of the Connecticut Valley Chapter of the Risk and Insurance Management Society incorporated, otherwise known as RIMS. He is a frequent guest speaker for insurance, risk management and finance classes at the University of Connecticut and University of Hartford. My alma mater, so very cool stuff.

Bob: Great.

Kim: He’s a participating risk manager in the Spencer Educational Foundation’s “Risk Manager on Campus” program, and graduated from Fairfield University in 1988 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Management and is a lifelong resident of Connecticut.

Bob: That’s me.

Kim: Bob, couple of things going on there.

Bob: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, when you work here for 40 years the…

Kim: That’s fair.

Bob: …the resume only gets longer.

Kim: Yeah, it’s excellent. Cool stuff. And I know, right, that’s your, that’s your day-to-day. Risk. Right?

Bob: Right.

Kim: But we’re here today to talk about, kind of, your unofficial title…

Bob: Yes.

Kim: …of Travelers historian.

Bob: Very unofficial. I have to emphasize the unofficial, but, I do find that having a knowledge of the history of the company is very helpful to that day job that you mentioned, because I often meet with our D&O (Directors and Officers) insurers and folks like that, that where it’s helpful to have some knowledge of, you know, the history of the company.

Kim: So, I really want to take our listeners in this episode on, like, a time journey.

Bob: Sure.

Kim: So, can you take us back to the beginning? Take us back to our founder and the story of the two pennies in 1864.

Bob: Yeah, yeah, yeah. My pleasure, my pleasure. It really begins earlier than 1864, which is when Travelers opened for business. I like to start with 1823, which is when James Batterson was born here in Connecticut. He was born in what’s now known as Bloomfield, Connecticut. Back then it had a different name as Wintonbury, Connecticut. Mr. Batterson was born dirt poor, one of a dozen children. Shortly after he was born, the whole family moved to Litchfield. His father was a, a, stonecutter, and not particularly good at that line of business either as, as the story will unfold. So, they moved to Litchfield, Connecticut, and James was a, an ardent student, however, his parents did not possess the funds to send him to, to college. So at the age of 14… Now, now wrap your mind around this. At the age of 14, his parents say, “Okay, you’re 14. Out you go. Go, go make a living for yourself.” So, on foot from Litchfield, Connecticut, Mr. Batterson proceeds west and walks to Ithaca, New York, where he gets a job at a print shop. And the print shop hired him because Batterson had self-taught himself how to read and write in both Greek and Latin, which was valuable at a print shop. So, we have in the Travelers archives, actually, Batterson’s contract with the print shop, where he agreed to work there for six years, and the terms of the contract were, at the end of six years, he would be given a suit, a Bible and twenty dollars, and during the six years he agreed not to gamble or carouse or drink and, you know, different days, different days back then. Twenty dollars, you know, for your six-year commitment. So as your, as your exit bonus. But, but lucky for us, Mr. Batterson’s father sent for young James to come back to Litchfield to help him with his floundering stonecutting business. So, Batterson comes back. He’s in his late teens or early 20s at this point, and it turns out he’s actually a very savvy business person. That, that education gave him some business smarts as well. And he turns the stonecutting business around, actually relocates to Hartford and creates what’s known as the New England Granite Works, which becomes a very powerful company both in Hartford and New England, and actually gives Mr. Batterson some financial success. But, never went to college. Founder of Travelers. Never, never went to college. Although later in life, he would get two honorary degrees from, from Yale University and Williams College, I believe. However, I haven’t mentioned insurance yet. At all.

Kim: Stonecutting.

Bob: So still, still in the stonecutting business, very successful at it. When you read his bio, I swear it makes me think of Indiana Jones, really. He doesn’t look like Harrison Ford, but the resume is similar. You know, very smart person. He spent three years in the 1850s in Egypt, actually, to pursue his passion for, for Egyptology. Still, still I haven’t mentioned insurance at all. So, as luck would have it, as part of Mr. Batterson’s stone business, he has to travel throughout Europe to find both materials to use in the stone business and also to get the greatest artisans he could find in Italy and France and bring them back to Hartford to work in this New England Granite Works. And, by this time we’re talking about, like, a 600-person operation here in Hartford, and several hundred more people at their New York City facility, you know, a real, real company. Mr. Batterson happens to be at a train station in London, and he’s offered an accident ticket. And this intrigues him. He’s like, “Well, what’s an accident ticket?” And they said, “Well, if you’re injured while on the train ride, it’ll pay you or your next of kin, you know, a few hundred dollars. You know, it’s an insurance product.” This fascinates Batterson. Comes back to Hartford and decides to go back to England just on a research trip about insurance. So, this is 1862, 1863. He goes there, walks into a Lloyd’s underwriting office and says… He’s a big gentleman, very, very imposing gentleman. Walks in, “I’m James Batterson from Hartford. I want to learn about insurance.” So, he spends a day at a Lloyd’s underwriting company. Comes back to Hartford, 1863, and starts soliciting Hartford businessmen to invest in an accident insurance business. One thing that really intrigued Batterson was, or that made an impression on him was, he didn’t think it was advertised very well. And maybe this goes back to his print shop days that he just happened to hear about it at a train station. He hadn’t, he hadn’t seen this. And it didn’t exist here in the United States. So, he solicits businessmen, to invest in this company. Now, keep in mind what’s going on in the United States in 1863. The Civil War is just coming, coming to an end. And, so people are going to be traveling back up north, back south, the great expansion, you know, to…

Kim: Perfect time.

Bob: …it was the perfect time for an accident business. And the reason why we’re called Travelers is because, the only insurance product we sold when we… I say we like I was here then. I’ve been here a long time but I wasn’t here then. But, because we sold these accident tickets to protect people traveling. So, when you look at early advertising for Travelers, it shows, you know, train locomotives, stagecoaches, steamships. So Batterson, you know, gets a charter from the State of Connecticut in 1863 to open Travelers in 1864. You mentioned the two pennies. So, Batterson happens to bump into another Hartford businessman at the post office, a Mr. Bolter, and says, “You know, I’m starting this company. Would you like to invest, invest in it?” And Mr. Bolter says, “Well, what would you charge me as a premium just to insure me for my walk back from the Hartford Post Office back to, back to my home?” And Mr. Batterson says, “Two cents.” And so, Mr. Bolter gives him the two cents, and we actually have those two pennies, in a display in Batterson Hall, along with the ticket that Mr. Batterson got at the train station that inspired him, to create, to create Travelers. And so, Travelers is launched in 1864. One thing to talk about Batterson as well was he was very politically active, that he was friends with Abraham Lincoln. In the Library of Congress, there are letters between Lincoln and James Batterson and, I haven’t been able to prove this, but I read it in a in an older Travelers journal that Mr. Batterson was with Lincoln just before Lincoln was assassinated, and Batterson was actually traveling back to Hartford from that visit when he learned of Lincoln’s assassination. And Batterson wrote a very poignant letter to Travelers employees, about the assassination that, that, that we have in the, in the Travelers records as, as well, you know, a lot of religious undertones and things like that. People just wrote and spoke differently back then. So that gets you up into the 1860s. Travelers opens, opens for business. And, you know, Civil War comes to an end. And keep in mind, we’re not writing auto insurance in the 1860s because there aren’t cars to speak of, you know, back then.

Kim: And now it’s such a big part of our business today, it’s like…

Bob: Oh, yeah.

Kim: …like you said, time’s just different, right? Times change.

Bob: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, Batterson is a very fascinating, fascinating person. And, and I think the aspect of him being a stone, stonecutter’s son really resonates with me because Jay Fishman, our, our, former chairman who sadly passed away, refutes, referred to himself as a printer’s son from the, you know, from, from the Bronx. And, and I like that connection. You know, stonecutter’s son and a printer’s son. Yeah, both of them from very, both, both from very humble beginnings.

Kim: Right. Right. Okay so, Travelers opens its door in the 1860s. We’re in 2026 now. Sitting here today. What, what happens, Bob, between, you know, those, what? Almost 200 years?

Bob: Yeah.

Kim: What happens? You know, how do we get to modern day Travelers?

Bob: Well, I think the most significant event, and if you really want to flip to modern day and there’s a lot of insurance firsts there, you know, we, you know, that Travelers came up with. But I would say it was the Sandy Weill Primerica investment in the 1990s and Travelers, that the Travelers got itself into some financial trouble. When I refer to Travelers back then, that’s a, you know, same name as our company, but a very different company back then. But what happened back then in the 90s was Travelers got its investment portfolio wrong. Back then, that investment portfolio looked very different. It was heavily invested in real estate and mortgages and that real estate bubble burst and that created financial trouble for Travelers. It was so bad that even the SEC was directing Travelers to restate its financial earnings in prior years, which is, like, unheard of, considering, you know, how strong our financials are today. So, in comes Primerica. In comes Sandy Weill, at first to make a investment in Travelers and then, in I think it was 1993 or roughly around then, to, to buy out the rest of it. And Sandy was so enamored with the Travelers name that even though Primerica was Sandy’s company that acquired Travelers, he decided to change the whole company’s name to Travelers Group. And then he sends Bob Lipp and Jay Fishman, two of Sandy’s, you know, trusted lieutenants up to Hartford to see, “What did I buy?” You know? “Fix it. Fix it,” basically. And, and, you know, the rest is history a bit as far as, cleaning up the financial, financials of the company. And then Jay left to go over to St. Paul’s companies, and then clearly Bob and Jay, you know, had a, had a kinship and friendship with each other because of the 2004 merger between St. Paul, St. Paul and Travelers, which really brings us to the Travelers of today, a dedicated property casualty insurance company.

Kim: Yeah. And you, you mentioned a lot of industry firsts. Can you talk about some of those?

Bob: Well, the auto insurance was one of the first, I think we were a first in aviation insurance. We were involved in insurance for the, the Apollo astronauts. And we have some applications signed by them on display in Batterson Hall. You know, as you know, now, we’re the largest work comp insurer in the country. You mentioned before, in my resume, that, that I was involved in some product development when I was in Bond and, which was a lot of fun. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s a lot of fun to take out a blank piece of paper and come up with a new product, and I, and it, it, it, it fascinates me a bit that there isn’t more of it, you know? Like, thinking about what people are worried about and things like that to come up with new, new insurance products. But, but I had a lot of fun with that back in the day.

Kim: Well, I think it also speaks a lot to that innovative spirit, right?

Bob: Yeah.

Kim: It’s, it’s Batterson way back when…

Bob: Yeah.

Kim: …who’s, you know, creating something out of nothing. It’s you talking right now about that blank piece of paper.

Bob: Yeah.

Kim: Right? And having that support and, and space to create…

Bob: Right.

Kim: …in the workplace. And I feel like that, that rings true in the walls today.

Bob: Yeah. And, what really strikes me, as you said, is the InJam (Innovation Jam) process that we have annually. Like, that didn’t exist, you know, back when I was working in products like that. And so, you’re kind of making time to work on it and, and, you know, finding your way, like, “How do I, how do I launch a new product?” Like, “How do I get support for it?” Now we have this InJam process and other, other processes to, to help people that have an idea, you know, to bring it, to bring it, to bring it to market or bring it to fruition.

Kim: Absolutely. It’s great. You… In going through the history, a couple of times, you mentioned the Batterson Hall Tours.

Bob: Yeah, yeah.

Kim: Can we talk about what Batterson Hall is…

Bob: Yeah, sure.

Kim: …here in Hartford, and then, you know, tell us a little bit about the fun you have on those tours.

Bob: Yeah. My favorite thing about it is when you’re bringing people in to see it that have never been there, often people that work here on the block, because it’s kind of on a dead end, off a dead end, off a dead end in Main South. You wouldn’t just walk by it. You’d have to be going there just because of where it’s situated. It’s the old main entrance into Main South. That, so, so the… Main South was built in phases. The last part was the tower built on the top, which was completed in 1919. But the oldest part, that entrance at Batterson Hall, is around 1907 or so. And it’s this grand staircase entrance into, into Batterson Hall. When you walk into there, it’s like you’re walking into a Newport mansion. You can tell Batterson stonecutting, you know, influence on, on the decor in there and I, and I and I love when I walk groups in there, kind of looking over my shoulder to see the reaction when they walk in, because we’re so used to cubicles, you know, normal entrances and people don’t realize we have this spectacular old main entrance in there. So, you come up the stairwell from, from street level, if you will, into what’s called Batterson Hall, which is this beautiful room with similar, you know, architectural, architectural decor as the entrance, but it was created to be the 3GS auditorium back in the day, really. It was, it was called Assembly Hall originally. It wasn’t named after Batterson until, until he passed. But it was meant for whatever function you wanted to have in there that, I’ve seen photos of old, Travelers choral group and musical performances back then. Now, because of, it’s really not, you know, wheelchair accessible and things like that. We really just do the tours there and I don’t think we have events in there, in there, in there anymore. But, it’s a great place to bring a tour group. We do tours even for external people. I did one for, the Department of Insurance that was, that was in there. But they’re typically, I would say most of the tours are for inside groups that maybe happen to be here for a conference. You can also combine it with doing a tower tour. But, so, the Batterson Hall tour is the tour of the ground level area, and the tower tour is where you go up, with corporate security, up to the top of the tower, which, in the fall…

Kim: Quite the view.

Bob: …it’s a beautiful view. We’re very lucky the Travelers tower is here in Hartford and not in New York City, because New York City, you’d just be staring into the side of much taller buildings. But here in Hartford, it’s a really pretty view up there.

Kim: Yeah, and inside of Batterson Hall, you know, you come up those stairs… It used to be an event space, but I know there’s a lot of artifacts and things. It’s almost like its own museum, correct?

Bob: Yeah. Starting from ground level, there’s a memorial to the Travelers employees that lost their lives in World War II. So, we point that out to visitors. And then, when you come up the stairs on either side of the entrance to Batterson Hall, is the memorial to the Travelers employees that lost their lives in World War I. That plaque was put up when the room was built, or close to when the room was built. And you can tell it was put up before World War II because they don’t call it World War I in that plaque. They just call it the World War, because, little did they know, World War II was coming. And then you enter to, enter into the room and there’s an enormous, larger than life statue of Mr. Batterson up in there. Artifacts in the room, we have Mr. Batterson’s desk. We also have a desk from the first home office of Travelers, where the very first Travelers policy was ever signed, is in there. We have a desk from the St. Paul president. The artifact that, that people, are interested in is we have a gift pistol set from Samuel Colt, who was another Hartford business person, and arms dealer, basically, and he gave a Colt pistol to Mr. Batterson that’s engraved on the back strap, ‘With compliments of Colonel Colt to James Batterson.” What’s unusual about that pistol set is that typically Colt would give pistol sets to, to potential customers. So, generals or kings or, you know, or presidents, you know, that sort of thing. So, it was a little unusual, for a non-potential customer to receive that. But James Batterson was very close to Elizabeth Colt, Samuel’s, Samuel Colt’s wife, and together, James Batterson and Elizabeth Colt helped start the Wadsworth Atheneum. And so that was their, their connection there and Travelers’ strong connections at the Wadsworth Atheneum. And then also in the room, we have display cases around the room that have various, historic things in there. And one of the things I like to talk about when giving that tour is the brand, the Travelers brand, that we’re so used to the umbrella logo, which is, you know, just an iconic logo. We’re lucky to have it. But when the company opened, that wasn’t, that wasn’t our logo. That in the early years, we just used the Travelers name quite a bit in, in various fonts and things like that. But then in the early 1900s, around 1910 or so, we used a suit of armor as our…

Kim: No way.

Bob: …as our… Yes way, as our, as our logo and when you walk into Batterson Hall, because that was built when the suit of armor was our logo, if you look at the scrollwork around the door into Batterson Hall, there are suits of armor in there. And that image was King Arthur. And so, the concept of protection was, you know, you know, connected to insurance and that was our logo. But then, when World War I came to an end, that suit of armor was kind of, that’s a little too, you know, the country was kind of war weary. So, we moved away from the suit of armor, largely, but we just built the Travelers Tower in 1918, 1919, and we’re very proud of that. It was a, it was a significant building, was the largest building in New England, one of the tallest buildings in the world, I think, when it opened, believe it or not. And so, the Travelers Tower became our logo for quite a bit. So, we would say, you know, The Travelers, and then there would be a silhouette of the Travelers tower on it. Then, as you move into the 40s and 50s, the 50s in particular, the T became our, our logo. And so, so it would just be a T and then it would say The Travelers underneath it. We would give out agents a metal plaque that had a T on it for displaying in their office. And then, in the 1950s, it’s very interesting to see, we use the logo of the T with our customers standing under the T, like under the protection of a T, and you can see where I’m going now.

Kim: We’re working towards the umbrella.

Bob: Working towards it. Right, right, right. And so, if you look all the way up to 1959 or so, it was the T, you know, you’re better, you’re protected under the big T or under, under this Travelers logo where we would have a car and a family and their home. And then, in 1960, we moved to the red umbrella as a, as our logo and the, the, there isn’t, like, some great backstory that, you know, we hired Mad Men, you know, the story back then. It was just that we gave out some umbrellas with, with a, with a T logo on it, they’re extremely popular. And it clicked with somebody like, “Hey, that’d be a great logo.” And so, it became the official logo in 1960. What’s interesting about the logo, the umbrella logo, at first is that it wasn’t terribly standardized, that the logo would be in different shapes, sometimes the J would go this way of the handle, sometimes it’d go the other way. Sometimes it had four, you know… So, so, now logos are so locked in, like, you gotta protect a logo. But in the, in the 60s, it was a little more loosey goosey. And I like to collect the Travelers logo lapel pins of various, various generations. The one I typically wear, like, if I’m in a suit and I’m wearing a, you know, for a formal business meeting, I like to wear the very earliest one from, from 1960 is the one I prefer that has a T on it. But, that logo, you know, served us well. We briefly lost it for a few years when we spun out of Citigroup in 2002. Sandy Weill stayed with Citigroup and Sandy loved that umbrella logo and also, Citigroup kept Travelers life and annuity as a division when we spun out. And so, those of us that spun out with Travelers Property Casualty, we were pretty heartbroken to spin out without the umbrella. But then, thankfully, in 2007, a deal was struck between Travelers and Citigroup to, to get the umbrella back. I don’t know the terms of the deal but, but we got that umbrella, umbrella logo back and everybody that had, that worked here that had any umbrella paraphernalia hidden in their desk, it all instantly…

Kim: Dusted it back off.

Bob: …instantly came out. Yeah, yeah. It was, it was a fun day.

Kim: And that, that Travelers, the umbrella logo, you said it’s iconic, it is. I mean, outside of the, the tower, on Fishman Plaza, named after Jay Fishman, there’s that very large… It’s a photo op, right?

Bob: Yeah.

Kim: It’s a very large red umbrella statue.

Bob: Yeah. But funny story about where that logo got situated on Fishman Plaza. It’s not where it is right now. It was a few feet over and there used to be two fountains on Fishman Plaza, and those fountains fell into a bit of disrepair and needed some work and after Bob Lipp and Jay Fishman came up to, to Hartford to, to, you know, figure out, you know, you know, what did they buy and try to fix the finances, this issue of repairing the fountains came up as a topic at a meeting Bob Lipp was at. And, very famously, he said, “We’re not fixing the fountains. We’re going to just put dirt in them,” you know, like, like the least expensive option. So, when we got the umbrella back in 2007, sure enough, when they dug out those, those, what just became landscaping, it was, you could clearly see it was glazed blue. It was, it really was a fountain that they had filled with dirt as part of the expense cutting. But then, a few years later, when they renovated that whole Fishman Plaza and made it, you know, what it looks like today, they moved the umbrella over a little bit to where it is now, so it’s more visible from the street.

Kim: Yup. That’s awesome. We see photos of it across social media, like, all the time.

Bob: Yeah.

Kim: It’s really exciting for employees when they first come to Hartford if they haven’t been here yet so…

Bob: Yeah, yeah. It’s a great, it’s a great logo.

Kim: Bob, as we wrap up today, I’m just curious, any piece of history that’s your favorite about Travelers or even outside of Travelers?

Bob: I think one of my favorites that, that very few people know about is the, the ground where Main South was built is actually on a historic spot, not only in Connecticut history, but in U.S. history. That if you go back… You’re not going to believe how far I’m about to go back here. If you go back to the 1600s, okay? Where, where Main South sits was a tavern called Sanford Tavern. And on Halloween night, 1687, in that tavern, was a very historic argument, if you will, that British troops were there to get back the Connecticut charter from the Connecticut residents here. That Charles the Second had granted a charter to the governor of Connecticut to allow a certain amount of self-governance. Charles the Second, I don’t remember if he passed away, but James the Second becomes the King of England. He did not like Connecticut having that charter. So, he send armed British troops down to this tavern to get the charter back. So, into the night, on this Halloween night, 1687, they’re arguing back and forth over the charter. And as history has it, on cue, the candles were all blown out, the charter was thrown out the window to a Mr. Wadsworth, who was waiting on horseback, who rode down the street and hid the charter. Do you know what he hid it in?

Kim: No.

Bob: An oak tree. The charter oak tree. So that’s why one of our Travelers underwriting companies, the Charter Oak Fire Insurance Company. And that’s why an oak tree is very frequently used in emblems of Connecticut. Like when they did the, the historic quarters where they were named after every state, the Connecticut quarter had a oak tree on the back of it. So, where Main South sits was this historic argument over the Connecticut charter. And where that ties into U.S. history is those same Connecticut founders wrote something, before the argument over the charter, wrote something called the Connecticut Fundamental Orders, which is considered the first constitution in world history. And the Fundamental Orders document is why Connecticut is called the Constitution State. It’s why Hartford is called the birthplace of American democracy. It’s why on all of our Connecticut license plates, it says the Constitution State. This is 100 years before the U.S. Constitution. That’s the more well-known Constitution and U.S. history was written. But the story is, when Jefferson went to write that Constitution, and the Founding Fathers, they had a copy of the Connecticut Fundamental Orders from a century earlier that they copied when, when writing that document. So, I love that connection, of Connecticut history that, ties into where we’re located here in Connecticut.

Kim: Bob, thank you so much for all… I learned a ton today.

Bob: Oh, my pleasure. Most of it was true.

Kim: Yeah. So, a lot of our listeners are some of our employees, but also, folks who are interested in perhaps coming to Travelers, looking into careers at Travelers. So, I always like to ask my guests if someone wants to connect with you on LinkedIn, just to chat a bit more…

Bob: Sure. Yeah, sure.

Kim: Whether it’s about history or, perhaps it’s, it’s underwriting, bond or any of the above, that you’ve been doing here for your career, they’re welcome to…?

Bob: My pleasure, my pleasure.

Kim: Alright. Well, thank you for being here today. If you want to learn more about Travelers, visit our website. It’s Travelers.com/careers. Bob, thank you so much for being here today.

Bob: My pleasure.