Former American International Group Inc. President and CEO Robert H. Benmosche, who died Friday in New York after battling cancer for five years, will go down in history as the executive who led the well-documented turnaround of the insurance giant.

Robert Hartwig, president of the New York-based Insurance Information Institute, said in an email, “… There’s no question that he will forever be remembered in the annals of corporate history as having successfully engineered the largest corporate turnaround of all time.

“Few would have believed or even imagined that the company he took over in 2009 — deeply in debt to and majority owned by the federal government — would be restored not only to independence but profitability and growth,’’ Mr. Hartwig said.

Mr. Benmosche was inducted into the Insurance Hall of Fame in 2014. Earlier last year he stepped down and Peter D. Hancock, who had headed AIG’s property/casualty business, became the CEO.

In the insurer’s statement last week announcing his death, Mr. Hancock said his predecessor “poured his energy and focus into enabling AIG’s people to live up to their potential, and that’s why this company today is a sustainable enterprise that understands the importance of meeting and exceeding the expectations (of) all of our stakeholders.”

Mr. Benmosche came out of retirement to take the helm at AIG in 2009, a year after it nearly collapsed and was bailed out with more than $180 billion in federal assistance. He succeeded Edward Liddy, a retired CEO of Allstate Corp. who was tapped by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in September 2008 to lead AIG back from the brink of bankruptcy.

AIG was declared a systemically important financial institution by the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a designation with additional federal oversight that AIG accepted without protest. Mr. Benmosche led an aggressive program to raise capital by divesting noncore businesses to repay the federal taxpayers.

“Bob was one of the most inspirational and successful leaders in corporate America by any measure,” AIG Chairman Robert S. Miller said in the company’s statement Friday. “We will never forget that under Bob’s extraordinary leadership, the people of AIG repaid America in full plus a profit of nearly $23 billion.’’

Mr. Miller called him “a brilliant man who brought tremendous leadership, energy, passion and tenacity to his job’’ and said AIG will honor his legacy by continuing “to focus on integrity and performance.’’

Former AIG CEO Maurice R. Greenberg said in his own statement that he had recommended his “very good friend’’ Mr. Benmosche, who previously had been chairman and CEO of MetLife Inc., to the New York Federal Reserve as a possible CEO for AIG when the insurer needed strong leadership following the 2008 financial crisis.

“I knew then that Bob would do an outstanding job, and that he would be effective in saving AIG. That outcome speaks for itself,” said Mr. Greenberg, chairman and CEO of the Starr Cos.

AIG said Mr. Benmosche, who had undergone treatment for lung cancer since 2010, died at New York University’s Langone Medical Center.