That doesn't explain why Travelers Insurance thought that they needed their own gTLD. Size as measured in dollars isn't really relevant—Berkshire Hathaway is #5 and doesn't have one—what matters is size as measured in registered domain names (for internal or external use).

Basically no one outside of big tech has the volume of domain names to justify paying for their own gTLD, Fortune 500 or not.

Berkshire Hathaway is not a consumer brand; Travelers Insurance is. And some consumer brands are willing to spend very large amounts of money to forestall brand confusion, squatting, impersonation, etc. They probably bought their TLDs for the same reason they own travlers.com and many other variations: so no one else can use it either.

Sure, but did they need a tld? What are they going to use it for that travelers.com isn't a better choice?

How much money did they light on fire to have a tld and what utility does it provide?

Not only that, .insurance is a TLD, so why didn't they just get travelers.insurance?

More control?

They don't need it. But they don't want anybody else to have it either. With such a generic and descriptive name trade mark protection isn't easy.

And if GTLDs had become the AOL keyword of the 2010s they would have really been pissed if they missed out.

I could see a world where GTLDs were given extreme preference by search engines and browsers, but that world isn't ours.

Well, ICANN explicitly forbid using just the TLD, so https://google/ was forbidden and you need at least https://blog.google/

Yeah but it's an awful domain name lol

And that's why they're bad using gTLDs anyone would actually ever want to use. "Hey, fellow youths, check out our snazzy new website: statefarm.travelersinsurance! So easy to type on your IBM keyboard, amirite?"