🔒Fishman leaves indelible mark on Travelers, Greater Hartford

Conservative and low profile. Brave and inspirational. A leader in business and in life.

Those are all words and statements that have been used over the last few weeks to accurately describe former Travelers CEO and executive chairman Jay Fishman, who died Aug. 19 after battling ALS.

His passing has had a profound effect on Greater Hartford, where Fishman firmly implanted and grew Travelers' presence over the years, making the property and casualty insurer the Capital City's largest corporate resident.

When many corporate leaders were shrinking their footprints in downtown Hartford, Travelers not only stood its ground, but grew its presence over the last decade, and invested tens of millions of dollars to refresh its historic Travelers Tower, preserving a key piece of center-city architecture.

That's a testament to Travelers' top leadership — led by Fishman — believing in a city that doesn't always get the benefit of the doubt from its corporate residents.

With operations in New York and Minnesota, Travelers was never beholden to Hartford, yet Fishman and some of his top lieutenants believed in the city and region as a whole.

That was one of the reasons he led Travelers' backing of the PGA Tour's Greater Hartford Open golf tournament, which almost ceased to exist about a decade ago when corporate support for the event was drying up. The Fishman-led Travelers Cos. stepped up and took over title sponsorship in 2007 and turned the tournament into a world-class event.

Since then, the tournament has generated about $13 million for more than 500 charities. This year's Travelers Championship raised a record $2.8 million for charity, largely in support of ALS research, which Fishman had championed since being diagnosed last year with the progressive disease that affects nerve and muscle function.

Not only did Fishman direct the tournament's fundraising proceeds for ALS treatment and research, but he also shined the spotlight on a disease that affects 30,000 Americans. He bravely became the disease's chief spokesman during the Travelers Championship earlier this month, giving speeches and meeting spectators in a wheelchair, while using a breathing tube at times.

Ironically, the very public battle Fishman waged against ALS toward the end of his life went against the ethos through which he led Travelers as a chief executive. Although he helped build one of the most financially stable and successful property and casualty insurers in the world, Fishman kept a very low profile, skirting the media spotlight – for the most part – that some other well-paid Wall Street executives crave.

A 2011 Forbes article accurately called Fishman “Wall Street's Honest Man.”

His conservative nature helped steer Travelers out of major troubles during the 2008 financial crisis, when many companies overleveraged and bet big on risky investments that eventually soured. While many insurers took a government bailout to stay afloat, Travelers didn't need or want one.

Fishman said he always took a long-term view of things when managing Travelers, a rare position to stake out at a time when many executives acquiesce to the pressures of quarterly earnings expectations.

“I don't want to be [just] a caretaker,” Fishman said in the 2011 Forbes article, during a rare media interview. “I want to leave something behind that was better than what I got.”

Fishman not only left behind a company that was better than when he got it, but also a city and region.