Claims for specialty care and behavioral health care increased the most, and claims for pregnancy-related surgery moderated.

Cigna sells stop-loss insurance, or coverage that protects employers with self-insured health plans against catastrophic losses.

Claims have to reach the "attachment point," or employer's stop-loss deductible, before the insurer starts to pay a plan's claims.

"Stop-loss is a cumulative product, and we are still very early in the year," Dennison said. But, "so far, things are tracking to expectations based on the early indicators that we're monitoring."

Brian Evanko, Cigna's chief operating officer, noted that Cigna had increased stop-loss prices for 2025 because of the surge in claims. "We've been able to execute this while preserving our typical client retention levels," he said.

Cigna was the first health insurer to give details about what happened to claims at employer plans in the first quarter, which ended March 31. Cigna streamed the conference call live and posted a recording on its website.

Cigna's major publicly traded competitors — CVS Health, Elevance and UnitedHealth — said little about their employer health coverage operations during their analyst calls.

Related: Specialty drugs and cancer surgery claims will push up stop-loss renewal prices, says Cigna CFO

Cigna sold its Medicare business to Health Care Service Corp. March 19.

The Bloomfield, Connecticut-based company reported $63 million in net income for the first quarter on $3.7 billion in revenue, compared with $532 million in net income on $4.1 billion in revenue for the first quarter of 2024.

The company ended the quarter providing or administering health coverage for 18 million people in the first quarter, down from 19 million people a year earlier.

Weight-loss drugs: Cigna is the parent of Express Scripts, a big pharmacy benefit manager, and company executives talked about the EncircleRX program, which can help employers manage workers' use of Wegovy and other GLP-1 agonist weight-loss drugs.

"By 2030, we expect the market size to exceed $100 billion in the U.S. alone, and 1 in 10 Americans is expected to be on a GLP-1 medication," Evanko said. "Clients are looking for ways to manage the high cost of these medicines while ensuring appropriate use."

Part of Cigna's effort to help customers with the weight-loss drug issue will be the launch of a specialized GLP-1 mail-order pharmacy, EnGuide, next month, Evanko said.