Cigna President and CEO David Cordani said Feb. 1 the insurer, as one of JPMorgan Chase's service partners, will still be involved with the financial services firm's health needs despite JPMorgan's recent healthcare announcement, according to CNBC.
JPMorgan, along with Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway, announced its intent last week to create a company to lower employee health costs. Since the announcement, experts have speculated Cigna, which insures roughly 20 percent of JPMorgan's employees, may lose business, according to the report.
Mr. Cordani said during an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box" program last week, "We're one of JPMorgan's service partners, so we have ongoing dialogue with JPMorgan on a regular basis. … We do see this as an opportunity, and we're in the middle of that conversation, as you would expect."
Industry titans spearheading the Amazon, JPMorgan and Berkshire Hathaway joint venture said their reasoning behind the creation of the healthcare company is to form a separate entity to handle benefits "free from profit-making incentives." However, Mr. Cordani pushed back on the notion insurers are responsible for driving up healthcare costs.
"We should not view … an industry with medical cost trend [growth] of 5-6-7 percent as sustainable," he said during the program. "Our industry is capital intensive. … This is not going to get solved with extracting a couple of points out of the [profit] margin."
"I think the question fundamentally for everybody in the space is can you grow, can you innovate and can you continue to provide strong value," Mr. Cordani continued.
To listen to Mr. Cordani's full interview, click here.