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The death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last week has brought a new level of attention to the question of executive protection.
Thompson's shooting outside a hotel in New York also highlights that executives who aren't as high-profile as someone like Elon Musk may not always have bodyguards with them.
That level of monitoring can be expensive, and the amount companies pay for executive security varies widely.
On the high end, Musk and other CEOs including Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet's Sundar Pichai, and Salesforce's Marc Benioff are known for having multimillion-dollar security packages.
Others, including JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon, Amazon's Andy Jassy, and Apple's Tim Cook, have more modest protection services worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — amounts that can further increase when factoring in costs associated with the use of private planes, a common CEO perk tied to security considerations.
Health insurance companies, including UnitedHealth Group, don't appear to spend as much on executive protection as some of the Big Tech giants.
However, the health insurance industry isn't an outlier. Companies in other fields, like retail, also have relatively modest security-specific compensation.
Walmart CEO Doug McMillon and McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski, for example, appear to have individual security expenses of less than $25,000 for 2023, according to company filings. When including the use of private aircraft, Walmart paid $192,848 for McMillon's personal use of the company jet, while McDonald's paid $319,301 for Kempczinski's usage in 2023.
Company-paid security costs are typically disclosed in annual corporate filings known as proxy statements. The documents include a breakdown of the salary, benefits, bonuses, and other perks to provide a dollar value of top executives' total compensation package, which must be approved by the board and shareholders.
Security services paid for by the company for the benefit of an individual executive are typically included in a category called "Other Compensation" along with perks like personal corporate jet usage, 401(k) matching, or tax preparation services. It's possible that some security costs may not be reported in proxy statements, particularly if they were paid for by the executives themselves and not reimbursed.
It's not clear if Thompson had a security detail with him on the day of his death. Video footage obtained by the New York City Police Department appears to show him walking alone on his way into an "investor day" event in Manhattan.
Although he was CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Thompson was also an executive vice president of UnitedHealth Group, for which he received $21,187 in other compensation in 2023. That amount represented $14,850 in 401(k) matching and $6,337 in health insurance premiums, with no amount indicated for personal security.
The company has yet to release its annual proxy statement outlining 2024 expenses.
Looking further up the corporate ladder, Thompson's boss, UHG CEO Andrew Witty, also did not receive payment for personal security as part of his 2023 compensation package. However, the company did make corporate aircraft available for his use.
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"Witty is required for personal security reasons to use corporate aircraft for all business travel and is encouraged to use corporate aircraft for all personal travel," the proxy statement says, adding that Witty did not make personal use of the company plane in 2023.
A UHG spokesperson told BI the company is "partnering with local law enforcement to ensure a safe work environment and reinforce security guidelines and building access policies."
CVS, which owns Aetna, does not disclose the compensation of Aetna's president. However, CVS did provide its former CEO Karen Lynch with $44,148 for "personal protection" in 2023, as well as $243,281 for personal use of the company jet and $106,086 for personal use of a company car. A CVS spokesperson declined to comment.
Cigna CEO David Cordani received $310,437 in "other compensation" in 2023, largely constituted of $178,704 in personal travel on the company aircraft. Roughly $95,000 in other costs were provided for residential security system monitoring and maintenance, as well as expanded personal liability coverage.
Proxy statements for Humana and Elevance (owner of Anthem) did not specify personal security costs, while Kaiser Permanente is a nonprofit and not subject to the same reporting requirements.
Former Secret Service agent Joseph LaSorsa, who now runs the private security firm LaSorsa & Associates, previously told BI that an around-the-clock detail can cost $100,000 a month and isn't always enough to stop a motivated attacker.
At those rates, the annual cost of protection could balloon to $1.2 million — comparable to the base salaries of UnitedHealth's executive officers.
In other words, company-provided personal security can be an expensive proposition, and typically reserved only for a small number of top leaders. Different executives may also have their own personal preference for the level of security they travel with.
"Protection is very much driven on what a executive really wants," said John Orloff, a former US Secret Service agent who now leads security risk consulting at Jensen Hughes.
Orloff told Business Insider that his firm typically works with corporate security departments to develop their executive protection strategies in response to relevant threats.
Musk, the world's wealthiest person, has spoken out about personal security concerns in recent years. He told Tesla shareholders at the annual shareholder meeting that "two homicidal maniacs" had threatened to kill him and things were "getting a little crazy these days."
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Filings show Tesla paid a Musk-owned personal security company $2.4 million to protect him in 2023. However, the agreement is not structured as compensation for his services as CEO and is unusual among public companies (Tesla is fighting to reinstate Musk's 2018 compensation package after a Delaware judge ruled against it for the second time).
Musk travels with multiple bodyguards — sometimes as many as 20, according to a recent report. Employees at X, formerly Twitter, reported seeing his security follow him into the bathrooms at the company's headquarters.
While executives at health insurance companies may not be as recognizable as someone like Musk or Zuckerberg, Thompson's death could lead board members and CEOs to review executive protection costs in a different light. The matter could feature more prominently as compensation committees draft proposals for their companies' future annual meetings.
