Greg Deavens to Lead Independence Health

The board of Independence Health Group has named Gregory Deavens will succeed Daniel Hilferty as the company’s president and chief executive officer Dec. 31.

Independence Health is the Philadelphia-based of Independence Blue Cross of Philadelphia.

Independence Health provides or administers coverage for 8 million people. It has operations in eight states and the District of Columbia, and about $27 billion in annual revenue.

Hilferty has been the CEO of Independence Health for 10 years. He was the head of the company’s managed Medicaid unit for 13 years before that.

From 2015 through 2017, he was the chairman of the board at the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.

Deavens has been the chief financial officer at Independence Health since 2017.

He has a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Florida A&M University.

He started out in financial services as a senior manager at Price Waterhouse and an analyst at GE Capital. He got into the health insurance business in 1999, at Cigna. By the time he left Cigna, in 2004, he was vice president of investor relations.

Deavens worked for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company from 2006 through 2016. When he left, he was the corporate controller.

Deavens is chairman of the board for Hartford HealthCare, which oversees a hospital. He is a past chairman of the board of the Amistad Center for Art & Culture. He is a member of the boards of the Executive Leadership Council and the African American Museum in Philadelphia.

— Read Andrew McMahon to Lead Guardian, on ThinkAdvisor.

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