The Cigna Group

The Cigna Group is an American multinational for-profit managed healthcare and insurance company based in Bloomfield, Connecticut. Its insurance subsidiaries are major providers of medical, dental, disability, life and accident insurance and related products and services, the majority of which are offered through employers and other groups (e.g., governmental and non-governmental organizations, unions and associations). Cigna is incorporated in Delaware.

The company ranked #15 in the 2023 Fortune 500 list of the largest U.S. corporations by total revenue and in the 2023 Forbes Global 2000 ranking the company took 68th place.

The company has been embroiled in controversies, including engaging in automatic denials of insurance claims without reviewing them.

Cigna was formed by the 1982 merger of the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company (CG) and INA Corporation (the parent corporation of Insurance Company of North America, the first stock insurance company in America). The company name, Cigna, is a mix of letters from the merging companies, CG and INA. Insurance Company of North America was formed in 1792, while CG was created in 1865 by a special act of the Governor of Connecticut. In October 1871, the great Chicago Fire burned for two days, destroyed 2,000 acres, and left 100,000 people in Illinois homeless. INA paid $650,000, one of only 51 insurance companies (out of a total of 202) to pay claims in full.

Cigna sold the majority of its life insurance operations to Lincoln National Corporation in 1997.

In October 2011, Cigna agreed to buy HealthSpring Inc. for $3.8 billion to jump-start its business selling Medicare plans from 46,000 Medicare Advantage members to almost 400,000 Medicare Advantage members. The payment would come from an issue of new equity to cover about 20 percent of the value, with the rest funded by additional cash and debt. In 2013, Cigna operated in 30 countries, had approximately 35,800 employees and managed around US$53.734 billion in assets.

In June 2015, U.S. health insurer Anthem Inc. announced that it would acquire Cigna for $47 billion in cash and stock. Anthem confirmed it had reached a deal to buy Cigna on July 24, 2015. On July 21, 2016, the US Justice Department filed an antitrust suit to block the proposed merger, and a District Court ruling on February 8, 2017, blocked the merger on anticompetitive grounds. That month, Cigna Corp. called off its $48 billion merger agreement with Anthem Inc., with Anthem stating it would "continue to enforce its rights under the merger agreement and remains committed to closing the transaction." After exhausting federal appeals of the antitrust merger block, the companies turned on each other in Delaware's Court of Chancery. The legal saga came to an end with an August 31, 2020 decision denying both companies claims for compensation from the other for the failed merger.

On March 7, 2018, it was announced that Cigna would acquire Express Scripts in a $67 billion deal and on August 24, 2018, the shareholders of Cigna and Express Scripts approved the deal.