At Cigna, we are committed to making a positive, lasting impact on people we serve, communities in which we live and work, and the environment, through responsible and inclusive business practices that build trust and serve the needs of many stakeholders. Our purpose to improve health fuels our success and enables us to broaden our impact as champions for affordable, predictable, and simple health care.

Cigna Connects, our environmental, social, and governance (ESG) approach, is structured around three focus areas – health and well-being, environment, and responsible and inclusive business – that are important to us as a company and align with our mission. Through this framework, we drive action – connecting stakeholders who, together, can make a difference around critical health topics.

“We are guided by our mission, which is to improve the health, well-being, and peace of mind of those we serve and our purpose guides us to be champions for our customers and our communities,” said Cigna President and CEO David Cordani. “Corporate responsibility initiatives are critical to both our mission and our purpose. As we step back, 2020 was a defining year for the world and I’m quite proud of what we’ve done in terms of stepping forward for our customers and our clients with expanded services to provide them the peace of mind and expanded financial support.” 

Below, you'll find some of the positive actions Cigna took in 2020 across health and well-being, environmental sustainability, and responsible and inclusive business practices.

Health and Well-Being

Cigna takes a strategic approach to building a transformative health care model. We do this by using data, advanced analytics, and technology to improve health and to create more connectivity between the individual, their health care provider, and the health care system. In 2020, Cigna launched our Evernorth brand, whose four core capabilities are critical drivers of value creation: Pharmacy, care coordination, benefits management, and intelligence.

When the pandemic emerged, Cigna was the first in our industry to remove cost as a barrier, waiving out-of-pocket costs for COVID-19 testing, treatment, and telehealth screenings. Cigna is also protecting customers from surprise out-of-network bills, lowering prescription costs for the uninsured and increasing the accessibility and availability of our virtual care services. In addition, we launched an initiative to help prevent COVID-19 infections in three communities – South Florida, Houston, and Memphis – where one in five of our African-American and Hispanic customers live.

Cigna is also committed to building healthy communities through the Cigna Foundation and other corporate charitable contributions such as the five-year, $25 million dollar Healthier Kids for Our Future program and the Brave of Heart Fund, which launched soon after the COVID-19 pandemic to help support the families of frontline health care workers who lost their lives to the virus, with $25 million in support from both the Cigna and New York Life Foundations.

Environmental Sustainability

Cigna continues to execute on our strategic sustainability performance plan to manage the environmental impacts of our global real estate portfolio, enabling us to reduce our carbon footprint and eliminate operational inefficiencies. Cigna exceeded 2020 environmental targets in water, energy, and greenhouse gas emissions.

At Cigna, we take a precautionary approach to our environmental sustainability efforts. We believe that environmental stewardship also makes sound business sense because we are able to identify new efficiencies and make strategic investments that reduce our operating costs. As our 2020 environmental targets have expired, we have set our next-generation 2030 environmental performance targets including 100% renewable electricity by 2030, targeted water consumption reduction targets through 2030, and zero-waste for specific facilities. This includes a goal to be carbon neutral in Scope 1&2 emissions by 2040. 

Responsible and Inclusive Business

We strongly believe that investing in our people and their well-being is one of the most important decisions we can make as a company. A healthy workforce at Cigna means supporting our employees’ health and well-being, and it also further drives diversity, equity and inclusion, and fosters the growth and development of our people. We view DEI as essential to achieving our mission and business growth strategies.

Our DEI strategy includes actions such as our diverse candidate slate requirement, the launch of required unconscious bias training to all U.S. employees, and our commitment to reaching gender parity in our leadership pipeline by increasing the number of women at our director and senior director levels from 45% to 50% by 2024.

Beyond our commitment to DEI within our company, we are also committed to addressing health equity in our communities. The launch of our Building Equity & Equality Program in 2020 outlines our commitments to advancing health equity and DEI for underrepresented communities. As part of the program we’ve rolled out new offerings to support women and minority-owned businesses as well as health plans targeting the needs of racially and ethnically diverse- and women-owned businesses in Los Angeles.

In 2020, we started several initiatives aimed at improving and diversifying our supply chain, such as the launch of the new supply chain sustainability program, the creation of a PPE command center in response to COVD-19, and as part of our Building Equity & Equality Program, created a target to achieve $1 billion in diverse supplier spend by 2025. 

The 2020 Cigna Connects report demonstrates that improving health care is at the heart of everything we do at Cigna. That includes making health care more affordable, predictable, and simple for the communities we serve, reducing our carbon footprint, and operating our business in a responsible and inclusive manner. While we understand that there is more work to do, we are proud of the progress we made in 2020, and we are committed to continue to do our part to build a healthier, more sustainable, and inclusive world.