Travelers issued the first known automobile insurance policy in the United States in 1897. The policy covered Gilbert J. Loomis of Dayton, Ohio, whose motor vehicle was insured against liability risks.
The policy appeared during the earliest era of automobile ownership, when cars were still experimental and roads were dominated by horses and carriages. Travelers had already built an insurance business before motor vehicles created this new category of risk.
This fact is sometimes confused with the first compulsory automobile-insurance law or the first modern auto-insurance policy. Those are different milestones. Early automobile policies primarily addressed liability, while later products expanded to cover collision, theft, medical costs, and damage caused by uninsured drivers.
Travelers later became one of the largest American property-and-casualty insurers. Its red umbrella logo is associated with insurance, but the company’s 1897 automobile policy predates the widespread adoption of that branding.