As UnitedHealth’s troubles mount, new CFO faces challenge to restore confidence

发布时间：2025-08-05 12:22

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This time, it’s at embattled UnitedHealth Group—ranked No. 3 on the Fortune 500 and the largest U.S. health care company by revenue in 2024. John F. Rex, who joined the company in 2012 and has served as CFO since 2016, is being replaced—not by an internal candidate, but by an external hire. Rex will become a strategic advisor to the CEO, Stephen J. Hemsley.

Wayne S. DeVeydt, most recently a managing director and operating partner at Bain Capital, will assume the CFO role effective Sept. 2. DeVeydt brings experience in operational improvement and growth acceleration—a skill set that will be valuable as UnitedHealth’s share price is down more than 50% over the past year. The leadership change comes on the heels of a troubling Q2 2025, in which UnitedHealth’s financial results fell far short of Wall Street expectations, further rattling investors.

The company shocked markets on July 29 by reporting unexpectedly weak quarterly results, according to Fortune’s Geoff Colvin.

As Colvin writes: “The crisis first manifested in April. UnitedHealth Group was emerging from the trauma of executive Brian Thompson’s high-profile murder in December when the company released first-quarter profits far below Wall Street’s expectations. The stock plunged, slashing over $100 billion from market value within hours. A month later, CEO Andrew Witty abruptly resigned for unspecified personal reasons, and former CEO Stephen Hemsley returned to the job. The stock plummeted again.” (You can read the complete report here.)

Managing risk and costs

Now, DeVeydt—also former chairman and CEO of Surgery Partners and former CFO at Anthem (now Elevance)—will need to play a significant role in steering UnitedHealth back on course. The company has four main segments: UnitedHealthcare (coverage), Optum Health (care delivery), Optum Insight (software and analytics), and Optum Rx (pharmacy benefits).

Industry analysts say the road ahead won’t be easy. I asked Julie Utterback, senior equity analyst for health care at Morningstar, for her assessment. “UnitedHealth—and, frankly, the entire managed care organization (MCO) industry—needs to figure out how to balance the current mismatch between rates and medical utilization in their risk-bearing operations,” she told me.

This problem spans the U.S. health care system: higher-than-anticipated medical costs with insufficient premium increases began in Medicare Advantage in late 2023, spread to Medicaid in mid-2024, and now pressure individual exchanges and at-risk employer plans, Utterback said.

In other words, rising health costs are outpacing premiums, which is hurting profits for insurers like UnitedHealth.

On average, the medical cost ratio (the percentage of revenue spent on patient care) among the six MCOs tracked by Morningstar is expected to be more than 450 basis points higher in 2025 than in the prior decade.

In addition, UnitedHealth also faces pressures within its Optum Health unit, where, in some arrangements, the firm not only delivers caregiving services but also assumes the risk of managing a patient’s overall health, she said.

For MCOs to return to target margins, they need to secure better compensation for the risk they assume across the U.S. health care system, she added.

Regarding DeVeydt’s priorities as CFO, Utterback said finance organizations will continue to emphasize cost controls. Further adoption of AI and other digital tools to improve back-office efficiency will remain a focus, although UnitedHealth has already prioritized such initiatives for several years, she noted.

DeVeydt steps into the CFO role next month with a formidable to-do list, and the future of UnitedHealth’s financial recovery on the line.

Sheryl Estrada
[email protected]

Leaderboard

Costin Corneanu was named EVP and CFO of Amtrak, effective Aug. 4. Corneanu, who joined the company in 2020, has been serving as deputy CFO since January. He succeeds Tracie Winbigler, who will retire from Amtrak on Jan. 1, 2026. Until then, Winbigler will remain in her EVP role as chief transformation officer. Before joining Amtrak, Corneanu spent eight years at Spirit Airlines and four years at US Airways.

Kalani Reelitz, CFO of Compass, has resigned, effective Aug. 22, according to an SEC filing. Scott Wahlers, the chief accounting officer at the company for seven years, was appointed as the new CFO. Before joining Compass, Wahlers spent 16 years at WebMD, where he served as VP of finance, controller, and treasurer.

Big Deal

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released July’s employment report on Aug. 1, which showed a modest gain of just 73,000 jobs. The real surprise, however, was a steep downward revision to prior months: May and June job gains were lowered by a combined 258,000, according to EY-Parthenon Chief Economist Gregory Daco. With employment rising by only 19,000 in May and 14,000 in June, the three-month average payroll growth has dropped to just 35,000—down sharply from 123,000 a year ago.

"With persistent policy uncertainty, tariffs, and diminished immigration flows paralyzing employers, the U.S. economy is now flirting with job losses, revealing a labor market that is much weaker than most Fed policymakers had believed; the Fed is now behind the curve," Daco said in an email.

Employment appears set for a further summer slowdown as firms, facing renewed cost volatility from escalating trade tensions, remain focused on managing labor costs through reduced hiring, performance-based layoffs, restrained wage growth, and lower entry-level wages, he said.

On Friday, President Donald Trump ordered the firing of Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of the BLS, as the administration grappled with unexpectedly weak jobs numbers that included the large downward revision of the last two months of jobs data, Fortune reported.

Going deeper

"How Companies Benefit From Sharing Data" is a report in the Wharton business journal. Huan Tang, a professor of finance at Wharton, argues that there’s a new way to understand how firms interact and create value in the digital economy. Tang’s research uncovers a hidden network of inter-firm data flows, revealing that companies are connected not only by products or supply chains, but also by the information they exchange.

Overheard

"I see a lot of young people wanting to take the easy route without working so hard. But the truth is, you have to make sacrifices. You have to put yourself through a lot of discomfort."

—Sara Sabry told Fortune in an interview. Sabry became the world’s first Egyptian astronaut after flying to space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket on Aug. 4, 2022—before even turning 30. The then 28-year-old had to wake up at 4:30 a.m. for early-morning training and bioastronautics research, before reporting to her full-time job as CTO of a Berlin-based tech startup by 9 a.m.

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