- Following the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, UnitedHealth boosted its executive security. According to its annual filings, the conglomerate spent $1.7 million in security for its leadership. That spending will likely increase in 2025, as the company looks to assure investors it’s taking safety measures seriously.
UnitedHealth Group spent nearly $1.7 million in executive security in 2024, the company disclosed on Monday in its annual filings, months after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot outside a Manhattan hotel ahead of an investor event in December. As anxiety lingers over how to best keep its leadership safe, the conglomerate—and most other large public companies—will likely continue pumping funds into executive security, experts say.
Andrew Witty, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group, received $150,951 in executive security compensation in 2024, according to the company’s 2025 proxy statement. Heather Cianfrocco, the CEO of the conglomerate’s health service arm OptumHealth, received $926,989 in security. The company did not list a specific amount of compensation for Thompson.
Following Thompson’s death, the company implemented plans to beef up its protections for executives, including “perimeter protection” on its campuses. UnitedHealth insurers also removed pictures of their executive leadership from their official websites. The company paid $207,931 on behalf of some executives’ family members for personal and home security services, the filing said.
“We believe that these security services are appropriate and necessary given the risks associated with executive officer positions at the Company,” UnitedHealth said in the filing. The company declined Fortune’s request for comment.
The death of the UHC CEO on Dec. 4 sparked a wave of similar measures across other healthcare firms, with Elevance Health, the parent company of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, likewise removing photos of executives from corporate websites, and pharmaceutical giants J&J and Eli Lilly disclosing increases in spending on executive security in their respective annual filings in 2024. J&J, for example, provided executives with an armed driver and cited the UHC shooting as reason for increased measures.
UnitedHealth’s 2025 security spending
UnitedHealth’s 2024 security spending was exceptional due to Thompson’s death, and resulted in a rapid deployment of resources to address executives’ safety within the company. While the $1.7 million spent by the company likely isn’t representative of a typical year’s security costs, in all likelihood, UnitedHealth will increase its security compensation in 2025, according to executive protections experts.
“I would anticipate [spending] being higher, to assure investors, assure the leadership of the organization, that there is a serious commitment to their safety,” Eric Sean Clay, president of the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety, told Fortune. “They’ve had one of the worst events that you could possibly have occur.”
Designating seven figures for safety measures for its executives, UnitedHealth’s security spending ranks higher than average for public companies, according to a February report from executive compensation consultancy Compensation Advisory Partners (CAP). Analyzing disclosures of the largest 500 U.S. companies by revenue, CAP found the median disclosed cost of security perquisites for a team of named executives was $49,000, while the average was $414,000, and the highest reported spending was $6.8 million. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is an outlier, with the company pouring $23.4 million in security to protect the executive.
UnitedHealth has not explicitly disclosed spending for executive security in prior years, instead including costs in an executive’s broader compensation package, but this year and in the future, that could change. Investors may be antsy to see that the company is continuing to take safety seriously, according to Glen Kucera, president of enhanced protection services at Allied Universal, which provides security to about 80% of the Fortune 500. There are still many question marks on how aggressive UnitedHealth will need to be with future security, particularly as negative sentiment toward the company may flare as the man charged with Thompson’s murder, Luigi Mangione, faces trial.
While Kucera agrees security spending will almost certainly be higher for companies as leadership safety continues to be top of mind, spending will be more strategic than it was in the 30 days following Thompson’s death. The future of a company’s security compensation will depend on how controversial the company is, how comfortable executives are with having a security detail, what high-profile events the company will hold, and how much a company’s budget can accommodate. Numerous major U.S. companies are asking these questions, Kucera said.
“Not just health insurance, but across especially Fortune 500 companies and other controversial companies…almost every one of the boards and investment committees wanted some type of assessment done on, What is the threat? How much at risk are my executives? What is your proposal for protecting them?” he said.
