History of Travel Insurance – Insurance Tickets?

Did you know that back in the day travel insurance was known as “insurance tickets”? It’s true!

Travel Insurance was introduced to North America in 1864 when James G. Batterson founded The Travelers Insurance Company of Hartford, Connecticut. The company was founded to insure people while traveling, hence the name The Travelers Insurance Company. Of course the three prime modes of transportation at that time were, steamships, railroads, and stage coaches. It soon became evident that the best place to market travel insurance was at the ticket offices for those conveyances and that’s where The Travelers and other, copycat insurance companies, started selling their policies. After awhile the insurance policies actually started to look like the tickets issued by the ticket offices and would cover a traveler while they traveled on a “ticket” so soon the name caught on, “insurance tickets”.

The phrase, “insurance tickets” has been mostly been replaced with “travel insurance” and the industry has grown. The industry that Mr. Batterson started April 1st, 1864 with the sale of a $ .02 policy to well over $1,000,000,000 in sales a year.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.