Dive Brief:
- Brian Evanko, Cigna’s chief operating officer, will become the chief executive at the company following CEO David Cordani’s retirement in July.
- Cordani will become executive chair of Cigna’s board of directors after he steps down from the chief position on July 1, the company announced Tuesday.
- As CEO, Evanko will receive a base salary of $1.3 million and an annual target bonus of $2.6 million, according to a securities filing. He’ll also serve on the board of directors effective April 1.
Dive Insight:
Cordani is retiring after a nearly 17-year tenure as CEO. He assumed the role in June 2009, after serving as president and COO of the Bloomfield, Connecticut-based company, according to Cordani’s LinkedIn. Cordani has worked at the insurance conglomerate since 1991.
Evanko is also a longtime Cigna employee, having spent nearly 30 years with the company. He joined Cigna in 1998, according to Evanko’s LinkedIn.
Cigna appointed Evanko to COO last year as part of a broader restructuring of its C-suite that gave him oversight of Cigna’s insurance division and Evernorth, its health services division that houses Express Scripts. Previously, Evanko served as chief financial officer and CEO of Cigna’s insurance division.
The leadership transition comes as Cigna navigates the fallout of a landmark settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over its pharmaceutical benefits manager Express Scripts, announced early last month.
Cigna executives have argued the settlement with the FTC — which allowed Express Scripts to bow out of a lawsuit accusing Optum Rx, Express Scripts and CVS’ Caremark of raising the price of insulin — won’t impact profits at Express Scripts, which have buoyed the overall company’s financial performance as health insurance profits decline across the industry.
As part of the settlement, Express Scripts agreed to make changes to its drug benefits design, including delinking its compensation from savings it negotiates with drugmakers.
Express Scripts was already planning to transition its employer clients to a rebate-free benefits model, executives said on a fourth-quarter earnings call last month. Additionally, the settlement didn’t incur any financial penalties on Cigna, and the company isn’t liable if employers don’t want to adopt its new model.
“We expect to achieve a comparable level of profitability between the legacy model and the new model, although the source of the profit will evolve,” Evanko said during a call with investors.
