Incoming, Outgoing Travelers CEOs Talk Transition, M&As

Departing Travelers Insurance CEO Jay Fishman and his successor, Alan Schnitzer, insist that the property/casualty insurance giant will experience a smooth transition.

The Travelers Companies announced on Aug. 4 that Fishman would give up his role as CEO due to a neurodegenerative condition that appears to be a form of ALS. Schnitzer, currently CEO of Travelers’ Business and International Insurance Segment, will replace Fishman on Dec. 1, and Fishman will become executive chairman at that point.

They said Travelers has always evolved and will continue to do so as it gains a new CEO. “This is really an institutional strategy that we have and we’ve been executing on. It’s not of the moment. It’s over many years,” Schnitzer said during an investor call. “We’ll be bold and creative and thoughtful and continue to take on the challenges of the marketplace in all the ways you would expect a great leadership team to do that.”

Fishman said a large-scale acquisition is probably not in Travelers’ immediate future. “I have always said that we look at anything and everything, and if there’s a rumor around that we’re looking at it, it’s probably a good assumption that we are,” he said.

Any M&A deal must add value to the company, Fishman added. “We couldn’t care less about being bigger for bigger sake,” he said. “We’d like to be bigger if it changes either our growth trajectory or our return opportunity, or if the return volatility gets lower. But just to do a transaction to do a transaction [creates] way too much risk with our shareholders’ money, and I’ve got to make sense out of it and make everyone understand why it makes sense.”