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Larry Glasscock: the CEO of Indiana''s second-largest company discusses Anthem''s amazing growth and gameplan for the future. (Q & A).

Article Excerpt
Larry C. Glasscock joined Anthem Inc. in 1998 and took over as president and CEO in 1999, succeeding long-time leader Ben Lytle. Under Glasscock's direction. the Indianapolis-based health insurer continued an aggressive expansion strategy and took steps to become a publicly-held company.

Those steps were completed in October, when Anthem went public in the largest initial public offering in Indiana and health insurance industry history. With the IPO, the company became the second largest public company in the state, behind only Eli Lilly and Co.

The pace has not slowed for Glasscock and the senior management at Anthem since the IPO. In late July, Anthem complted the acquisition of Trigon Healthcare Inc., Virginia's Blue Cross and Blue Shield licensee and the largest health care plan in that state. The $4.2 billion deal added about 2.2 million members to Anthem's health care insurance business.

Glasscock has beer well-rewarded for his efforts, making more than $15 million in 2001; mostly in bonuses. The pay-out made him the highest-paid executive of an Indianapolis-area public company last year.

His tenure so far hasn't been without some hurdles. In February, the insurance commissioner of Kansas denied, at least temporarily, Anthem's proposed purchase of 800,000-member Blue Cross of Kansas. A judge has since sent the decision back to the commissioner for further consideration and Anthem continues to pursue the purchase.

Anthem also has been the subject of physician complaints about its reimbursement practices. In April, the Indiana Department of Insurance responded to several complaints and ordered an examination of reimbursement policies. Last month, the American Medical Association sent Anthem a letter asking it to modify several of its reimbursement practices. Glasscock declined to answer questions about physician reimbursement issues, instead referring them to Samuel R. Nussbaum, executive vice president and chief medical officer for Anthem (see page 10).

Nevertheless, it doesn't look like either of those issues is slowing Anthem. Now the nation's fifth-largest health insurance company, Anthem was recently added to the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index.

Since October, you've overseen the largest IPO in Indiana history, helped engineer an acquisition that grew your company by 20 percent and delivered results to the market that have your stock at nearly double what it initially opened. What are you going to do for an encore?

We're going to make sure that we meet the needs of our customers every day. Not only hopefully meet them, but exceed them. We have felt that for a long time that customers are what we're all about. If you look at our core values, it's all about customer focus. It leads the list for that very reason. So we think we are building a wonderful company, and the way we need to ensure that that continues is to meet our customers' needs every day.

Can you define customers for me? In other words, are those the folks that are buying the policies from you?

You can get a lot of different definitions of customers, but we're talking about the people who utilize benefits or who have the policy available for benefits if they need them.

Does Anthem need to continue to grow...