The Hartford

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Hartford

Type	Public (NYSE: HIG)
Founded	Hartford, Connecticut, USA (1810)
Headquarters	Hartford, Connecticut, USA
Key people	Ramani Ayer, Chairman, President and CEO ; Thomas M. Marra, President and COO, Hartford Life ; David K. Zwiener, President and COO, Property and Casualty Operations ; David M. Johnson, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer ; Neal S. Wolin, Executive Vice President and General Counsel ; Ann de Raismes, Executive Vice President, Human Resources ; David M. Znamierowski, President, Hartford Investment Management Company and Chief Investment Officer
Industry	Financial Services, Insurance & Investments
Products	PROPERTY AND CASUALTY OPERATIONS: Commercial and personal property, home and automobile insurance; General, professional and product liability insurance; Marine insurance; Workers’ compensation insurance; Bond insurance; Excess and surplus lines insurance; Directors and officers liability insurance; LIFE OPERATIONS: Annuities, mutual funds, 529 college savings plans, retirement plans, life insurance, estate planning, private wealth management, disability insurance, group life and accident insurance, group retiree health
Revenue	$26.5 billion USD (2006)
Net income	$2.75 billion USD (2006)
Employees	31,000 (2007)
Website	www.thehartford.com

The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc., (NYSE: HIG), usually known as The Hartford , is a Fortune 100 company and one of the nation’s largest investment and insurance companies. With 2006 revenues of $26.5 billion, The Hartford is a leading provider of investment products, life insurance and group benefits; automobile and homeowners products; and business property and casualty insurance. The company’s international operations are located in Japan, Brazil and the United Kingdom. The company’s earnings are equally dividend between its property and casualty operations and its life operations.

1 History
2 The Stag
3 Competition
4 External links

[edit] History

The Hartford was originally founded in 1810 in Hartford, Conn., which was one of America’s leading seaports at the time. A group of local merchants gathered in a Hartford inn and, with working capital of $15,000, founded the Hartford Fire Insurance Company. The company survived through some of the greatest peacetime tragedies in America’s history. After a huge fire destroyed New York’s financial district in 1835, The Hartford’s president, Eliphalet Terry used his own personal wealth to cover all of the company’s damage claims. Other catastrophic events include the Chicago fire of 1871 and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.

Over the years, the company has expanded and grown its business. In 1913, the company formed The Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company to provide a wide variety of insurance coverage, including accident, automobile liability, personal damage, business interruption and more. Then in 1959, the company expanded into the life insurance business by acquiring The Columbian National Life Insurance Company in Boston, Mass. In 1970, The Hartford was acquired by ITT Corporation for $1.4 billion, which was the largest corporate takeover in American history at the time. The combined company was renamed ITT-Hartford Group, Inc. Twenty-five years later, in 1995, ITT Corporation decided to streamline its operations and release some of its subsidiaries and The Hartford became an independent entity once again, trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "HIG." Two years later, the company changed its name from ITT Hartford Group, Inc. to The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc., and also issued an IPO for its Hartford Life business under the ticker symbol “HLI.” In 2000, The Hartford reacquired all the shares of Hartford Life and HLI was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange in 2006.

Notable leaders throughout history have owned The Hartford’s policies, including Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate forces during the American Civil War, who purchased an insurance policy for his family home known as “Arlington,” which is now part of Arlington National Cemetery. The 16th U.S. President Abraham Lincoln purchased a policy to protect his home in Springfield, Ill. In 1920, Babe Ruth purchased a “sickness policy” from The Hartford the same day he was traded from the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees. The policy protected his earnings if illness prevented him from playing during spring training or the regular season.

[edit] The Stag

The Hartford Stag is one of the most familiar trademarks in America. Exactly when a stag first appeared as the company’s logo is not known for sure. The oldest on record is the one that appears on the 1861 Hartford policy issued to Abraham Lincoln. But Hartford Stags might well have appeared earlier. A stag (or hart) fording a stream is a natural symbol for a company named The Hartford.

The Lincoln stag, however, did not last long. By 1867, the Hartford Stag began slightly to resemble an entirely different stag, one that had become enormously popular over 15 years earlier, first in England and then later in the United States. That stag was known as, “The Monarch of the Glen.”

Painted in 1851 by Sir Edwin Landseer for the Peer’s Refreshment-Room of Parliament’s House of Commons, the Monarch of the Glen cause an immediate stir: the members of the House refused to pay Landseer’s price, claiming they had not been properly consulted and the price was too steep. Eventually, the painting was sold to a private collector, out of public sight. Nevertheless, once seen, few could forget the powerful image of such a magnificent animal. Reproductions soon appeared throughout the English-speaking world.

By 1875, the Hartford Stag clearly echoed the Monarch of the Glen – with one slight difference. The original Monarch appeared in a mountain setting, the company “monarch” near a stream. Apparently, the company wished to retain the hart-ford symbolism in its logo. But by 1890, even that last trace of the first Hartford Stag was discarded.

In that year, the company commissioned the John A. Lowell Company of Boston to create a large steel engraving of Landseer’s painting, and prints were distributed across the country through the company’s extensive agency force as the Hartford Stag.

Minor changes to the logo have been made through the years, generally to conform to current fashion and to printing requirements. The latter reason was the cause of the graphic logo version introduced in 1971.

[edit] Competition

State Farm, Allstate, Progressive, Chubb, CNA, Lincoln National Corporation, Principal Financial Group, StanCorp Financial Group, Inc., Prudential Financial, Inc.