CI

What You Should Know

The Cigna Group is one of the largest health-services and health-insurance companies in the United States, organized into two main businesses: Evernorth Health Services (the larger segment by revenue, including Express Scripts — one of the largest pharmacy-benefit managers (PBMs) in the United States — Accredo specialty pharmacy, and care-services and benefits-management businesses) and Cigna Healthcare (commercial and government health-insurance plans, including employer-sponsored medical, dental, behavioral, and supplemental coverage, plus Medicare and international health-insurance products). Conventional health insurance is problematic under standard Sharia methodology for two core reasons: first, conventional insurance contracts contain gharar (excessive uncertainty) — the policyholder pays premiums in exchange for an uncertain future payout, which most classical and contemporary scholars hold to be an impermissible exchange; second, insurance companies invest premium float in interest-bearing (riba-based) instruments, generating a substantial portion of profit from riba. The Sharia-compliant alternative to conventional insurance is takaful (cooperative mutual insurance based on donation and shared-risk principles). Because conventional insurance is the core business activity, Cigna fails the business-activity Sharia screen — this is a structural disqualifier that cannot be resolved by financial ratios or purification. Most major Sharia advisory boards classify health-insurance companies including Cigna as non-compliant.