UnitedHealth Group CFO Wayne DeVeydt laid out a roadmap to improve the company’s financial performance during an interview at the UBS Global Healthcare Conference on Nov. 10.
“Having competed against this organization for years, both as the CFO of Elevance and then on the board of Centene, the one thing that’s very clear to me is that the assets are as good as I thought they were,” Mr. DeVeydt said. “We want to show that we can get back to the swagger the company once had.”
UnitedHealth has been working to assure investor confidence over the last year as it faces financial headwinds related to rising medical costs and utilization, especially within its Medicare Advantage and Optum Health businesses. Part of the recalibration efforts have included several senior leadership changes, with Stephen Hemsley returning to the CEO role, Patrick Conway, MD, being named CEO of Optum, and Mr. DeVeydt becoming CFO in September.
The company is projecting a 10% medical cost trend for 2026, up from the 7.5% trend seen in 2025, reflecting the impact of evolving drug pricing, tariffs and AI-driven coding trends among providers. Within its ACA business, UnitedHealthcare is implementing a 25% rate increase in 2026 “across the board” and expects to lose two-thirds of its exchange membership due to the anticipated expiration of enhanced premium tax credits at the end of this year.
Mr. DeVeydt also pointed to previously announced membership changes within the Medicare Advantage business, with the company expecting to see membership decrease by about 1 million members during the ongoing open enrollment period. Of those, about 600,000 were PPO plans that UnitedHealth discontinued due to unfavorable economics, and around 200,000 were group MA plans that were either repriced or dropped from the portfolio. The remaining 200,000 lives are split evenly between Dual-Eligible Special Needs Plans (D-SNP) and non-D-SNP populations.
The company is also making large investments in technology, including artificial intelligence, to roll out new product offerings, which has led to the internal deployment of more than 2,000 AI engineers.
“Our CEO is not only all in, but he is aligning incentives around what the entire company does around AI, and how quickly we can productize those and bring those to market,” Mr. DeVeydt said.
Optum Health, the care delivery business, is dropping about 200,000 PPO lives as part of a shift back to its core value-based care model. During its third quarter earnings call, UnitedHealth executives said the company had overrelied on its network of more than 90,000 affiliated and employed physicians and plans to switch to a direct employment model.
Mr. DeVeydt shared that UnitedHealth plans to resume its share buyback program in the second half of 2026, along with returning to more M&A activity. He also said the company has shifted away from its international ventures and is refocusing on its core U.S. businesses.
One of the company’s largest challenges has been the impact of the Change Healthcare cyberattack in early 2024 that led to the loss of many large customers. Mr. DeVeydt pointed to new AI-driven products currently being sold to clients in an effort to restore trust and regain some of its lost business.
“A lot of payers realized, as well as providers, that having all your eggs in one basket wasn’t a good thing. We’re slowly starting to get some of that back, but we’re not getting back the whole client,” Mr. DeVeydt said. “We had to rebuild trust with our existing customer base and get new products to market. That’s starting to happen. That momentum will continue into 2026, but in 2027 you’ll see margin expansion.”
