When Customers’ Frustrations Turn into Fatalities

When the CEO of a healthcare provider was shot last Wednesday, it was cause for all leading retailers to pause… before re modelling risk…

Brian Thompson was the CEO of United Healthcare, the largest private insurer in the US. He was gunned down in Manhattan last Wednesday morning.

Thompson first joined the company in 2004, as Director of Corporate Development, and rose through the ranks to become the head of the company in April 2021. He was wealthy, earning £8M last year.

Thompson’s assailant was Luigi Mangione. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League University. He graduated valedictorian in May 2020 – an accolade usually awarded to the student with the highest academic achievements. One of his classmates said Mangione “didn’t have any enemies” and was a “valedictorian for a reason”.

Mangione comes from a prominent family in the Baltimore area, with extensive business interests including country clubs, nursing homes and a radio station. Like Thompson, they were rich.

On Thursday Mangione appears to have waited for him at a Hilton Hotel, where Thompson was due to speak, and shot him twice with a ‘ghost gun’ a privately made firearm that was unregistered and largely untraceable.

Experts have called ghost guns the fastest-growing gun safety problem in America, with the number recovered from crime scenes having last year increased by more than 1,000% since 2017, according to the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Most are made by ordering and buying the parts needed online, bypassing background check requirements. Components are manufactured using a 3D printer. The pieces often lack serial numbers, which make them hard to trace.

Tutorials online explain how to assemble the pieces into a fully functioning firearm with just basic tools, in less than an hour!

So why did Mangione do it?

Police say a three page document written by Mangione does not include specific threats to other people, “but it does seem he has some ill will towards corporate America.”

Online, there are other possible insights as to Mangione’s thinking. A person matching his name and photo had an account on Goodreads, a user-generated book review site, where he gave four stars to Industrial Society and Its Future by Theodore Kaczynski – more popularly known as the Unabomber manifesto.

“He was a violent individual – rightfully imprisoned – who maimed innocent people. While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a crazy luddite, however, they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary.”

Investigators say the words ‘deny’, ‘defend’ and ‘depose’ were written on shell casings found at the scene of Mr Thompson’s murder. Law enforcement sources say this may be a reference to the ‘three Ds of insurance’ – tactics used by companies to reject healthcare insurance payment claims by patients.

In the wake of the shooting, a number of politicians and industry officials expressed shock and sympathy. Michael Tuffin, President of insurance industry organisation Ahip, said he was “heartbroken and horrified by the loss of my friend Brian Thompson. He was a devoted father, a good friend to many and a refreshingly candid colleague and leader.”

However, a scroll through Thompson’s LinkedIn history reveals that many customers were angry about denied claims. And scores of others took to social media to share their frustrations. Some even seemed to delight in the death of the executive.

“When you shoot one man in the street it’s murder,” one person wrote on X. “When you kill thousands of people in hospitals, by taking away their ability to get treatment, you’re an entrepreneur.”

All of which now leads me to highlight four key concerns that I believe every retailer should be using to remodel their risk data…

First, Mangione was from a respectable background. Some might say privileged. Others elitist. However, when it comes to deciding where the first place is you are going to look for potential troublemakers or assailants, you need to be looking in different places to those historically focused upon. Put another way, you might be modelling risk with special regard for proximity of stores to known drug dealing locations or areas with high unemployment. Now you need to look further afield for those who are harbouring ill-will at other levels in society.

Second, the ease with which lethal weapons are becoming available is concerning. With strict gun laws the UK has managed to do better than most when it comes to gun crime. Sadly, only today a report has emerged of another mass shooting in Wisconsin in the USA with young people dead. America is synonymous with gun crime. However, when guns can be made on a 3D printer – just like a dental crown or an engineering component – then that creates a whole new channel through which firearms can be manufactured and distributed. That changes the nature of risk.

Third, that public opinion showed sympathy for what appears to have been the pre-meditated, cold-blooded murder of a respectable member of society – a business leader – should sound alarm bells. In the same way that we have seen the increasing acceptance of shoplifting as a necessity during a cost of living crisis, are we also going to see physical assault become an acceptable method of protesting about the perceived inequities of life, in a population that is so disconnected from the mainstream political system, that a new government can sweep to
victory with barely a third (33.7%) of the vote; as Labour did in the last general election.

Finally, whilst the full facts are yet to emerge, it appears that Mangione was fundamentally ‘protesting’ against the high costs of health insurance. As the CEO of the biggest health insurance provider in the US, Brian Thompson became the vicarious target through which that protest against the company would be expressed.

Now replace ‘health care’ with another cause of grievance. What about the cost of living crisis, the perceived high cost of food, the negative publicity surrounding the water companies and perceived shortcomings of the NHS as examples. All of these institutions are in the firing line. How will their leaders now be held to account for the perceived shortcomings of the businesses they lead?

Can we expect to see the head of every major business at greater risk. And then, does risk migrate down the order of seniority to softer targets without the same security. Are regional managers suddenly ‘fair game’ or store managers. Or will we see frontline workers – cashiers and other frontline colleagues – having to face a still greater level of threat?

One thing is for certain. The recent events in the USA could have profound implications for us in the UK, and how we view protecting everyone involved in our businesses. And if you would like to review your risk do that without delay, then please get in touch with me at ASEL. It will cost you nothing, but could be one of the most important calls you’ll ever make.