Good morning. We’re in the second half of 2025, and CFO turnover continues.
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
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
