Aetna Names Margaret McCarthy Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer.

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Aetna (NYSE: AET) today announced the appointment of Margaret (Meg) McCarthy, 51, as senior vice president and chief information officer, reporting to Aetna President Ronald A. Williams. McCarthy has been vice president for Aetna's Business Solutions Delivery since 2003 and replaces Wei-Tih Cheng, who retires at the end of this month.

In this role, McCarthy will be responsible for Aetna Information Services, which includes approximately 3,000 employees who work in information technology architecture, solution delivery, infrastructure and network services capabilities at Aetna.

"We are very pleased to have an individual of Meg's caliber within the organization and she is fully prepared to take on this important role," said Williams. "This is a critical position for Aetna as we continue our leadership role in consumerism in health care, which requires significant systems capabilities. Aetna's information technology infrastructure powers our ability to provide members, plan sponsors, health care providers and other constituents with actionable information to make informed decisions, when and where they want it."

"Meg already was leading a number of Aetna's IT capabilities, including program delivery, development, testing and production enhancements," continued Williams. "Her background is exceptional, and includes a progression of leadership positions in the health care industry with continuing emphasis on information management and performance improvement in health care providers and payers."

Before joining Aetna, McCarthy was a senior executive in CIGNA's IT organization, including senior vice president for the Application Management Practice and senior vice president and chief information officer for the Health Care Division. She was senior vice president and chief information officer for two large health systems, Catholic Health Initiatives in Denver, CO, and Franciscan Health System, Philadelphia, PA. McCarthy was a partner at Ernst & Young in Boston, MA and started her career at Accenture.

"I am very honored to be asked to lead Aetna Information Services during this very exciting period in the health care industry and in Aetna history," McCarthy said. "Aetna's businesses are focused on continuing to deliver innovative, easy to use, high value, integrated solutions for our customers that leverage information. We have a very talented technical organization that is committed to delivering these solutions."

As one of the nation's leading providers of health care, dental, pharmacy, group life, disability and long-term care benefits, Aetna puts information and helpful resources to work for its approximately 14.4 million medical members, 12.8 million dental members, 9.0 million pharmacy members and 14.0 million group insurance members to help them make better informed decisions about their health care and protect their finances against health-related risks. Aetna provides easy access to cost-effective health care through a nationwide network of more than 672,000 health care professionals, including approximately 400,000 primary care and specialist doctors and 4,084 hospitals. For more information, please visit www.Aetna.com. (Figures as of March 31, 2005)