As part of the ongoing enterprise-wide recalibration effort to improve financial performance, UnitedHealth Group leadership shared in late October that it would be moving its finance business at Optum under the umbrella of Optum Insight, the company’s data and analytics arm.
“We are realigning Optum Financial Services within our Optum Insight Services platform. Many of these actions are underway, and we believe they will improve both our focus and long-term performance,” CEO Stephen Hemsley told investors on the company’s third quarter earnings call.
Optum Financial offers a portfolio of financial products and solutions, including health savings accounts (HSAs), flexible spending accounts (FSAs), payment and claims management services and financial education tools.
The business unit includes Optum Bank, which serves around five million customers. In 2023, the bank recorded more than $400 million in brokered deposits and almost $600 million in interest income.
“The opportunity that we have to continue to expand within our financial services platform is quite substantial,” UnitedHealth CFO Wayne DeVeydt said at the UBS Global Healthcare Conference on Nov. 10. “We look at that with the same lens of how we can leverage AI as well to further expand and, candidly, accumulate even more deposits. It’s really the deposits that we also continue to find more cash flow to invest within the business. It’s a very attractive margin business, and I think it’s one that we’ve grown, but it’s been somewhat buried.”
Mr. DeVeydt shared that the restructuring will happen in January amid wider company efforts to invest heavily in artificial intelligence and the launch of new product solutions to clients across the healthcare industry.
UnitedHealth named Sandeep Dadlani as CEO of Optum Insight in September. He had previously served as the company’s chief digital and technology officer since 2022.
