The Cigna Group is a Fortune 15 health company. It buys IT services, professional services, facilities work, marketing, clinical supplies, and a long tail of everything else a $200B-revenue insurer needs to run. That spend is the opening. If you sell something a health company buys, there is a documented way to get into its supplier system, and a separate track built specifically for certified diverse businesses.
The mistake most owners make is treating "register on the portal" as the whole job. Registration puts you in a database. Getting bought is a different process, and the diverse-supplier program is the part that actually shortens the distance between you and a buyer.
Here's how the pieces fit.
Start with the portal: Inclusive Supply ChainThe Cigna Group runs its supplier registration through what it calls the Inclusive Supply Chain program. The portal lives at cigna.supplierone.co, hosted on the SupplierOne platform. This is the front door. To be considered as a supplier, you register your business there so Cigna's buyers can find you when a need comes up in your category.
One thing to know going in: the program's branding has been moving. The legacy "Supplier Diversity" language still appears across The Cigna Group's site, but the public-facing program and registration portal now carry the "Inclusive Supply Chain" name. The underlying machinery is the same. If you see both terms while you research, you're not confused. The company is mid-rename, which is common across large corporations adjusting supplier-diversity language in 2025 and 2026.
When you register, have your basics ready: legal business name, NAICS or commodity codes for what you sell, diversity certifications, capabilities, and a contact. Registration alone does not win work. It makes you findable. The goal is to show up when a category manager runs a search for what you do.
Which certifications The Cigna Group acceptsThis is the part worth getting exactly right, because the program recognizes a wide set of certified business enterprises, not just minority-owned firms. Per The Cigna Group's Inclusive Supply Chain page, the recognized categories are:
- Minority-Owned Business Enterprise (MBE), the NMSDC certification
- Women-Owned Business Enterprise (WBE), WBENC and equivalents
- Veteran-Owned Business Enterprise (VBE) and Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned (SDVBE)
- LGBTQ+-Owned Business Enterprise, the NGLCC's LGBTBE certification
- Disability-Owned Business Enterprise, Disability:IN's DOBE
- Small Business Enterprise (SBE) and Small Disadvantaged Business (SDB)
- Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE)
- HUBZone, SBA 8(a), HBCU, and AbilityOne participants
The Cigna Group accepts certifications issued by national, regional, and state or municipal certifying councils. So a third-party certification, NMSDC for MBE, WBENC for WBE, NGLCC for LGBTBE, Disability:IN for DOBE, is what gets you counted as a diverse supplier inside the program. Self-attestation does not carry the same weight. The Cigna Group is a corporate member of NMSDC and WBENC, with supplier-diversity roots the company traces to the 1970s, so the certifications it leans on are the ones those councils issue.
If you're not certified yet, that's the single most useful move you can make before registering. A current certification is what flips you from "a vendor" to "a diverse supplier a buyer is actively looking to add." CertifyAll handles the filing across the major councils so you capture your business information once instead of starting each application from scratch.
The mentor protégé track: CSMPPThe Cigna Group launched the Cigna Supplier Mentor Protégé Program (CSMPP) in 2016. This is the program's relationship engine, and it's where the real access lives.
The structure, as the company describes it: certified diverse suppliers (protégés) are paired with a Cigna executive as a mentor. The cycle runs roughly 15 months. Protégés get one-on-one monthly meetings with their dedicated mentor and attend quarterly onsite forums where subject-matter experts cover industry best practices. The point isn't a contract handed over at the end. It's the development of your business and the internal relationships that make you a known quantity when work comes up.
CSMPP is selective and built for certified businesses, so the on-ramp is: get certified, register on the Inclusive Supply Chain portal, build a relationship with the supplier-diversity team, and put yourself in position to be considered. For program questions, The Cigna Group lists InclusiveSupplyChain@TheCignaGroup.com as the contact.
Where Tier 2 fitsLarge buyers like The Cigna Group track two layers of diverse spend. Tier 1 is direct: Cigna contracts with you and pays you. Tier 2 is indirect: one of Cigna's large prime suppliers subcontracts to you and reports that spend back up the chain.
For a smaller diverse business, Tier 2 is often the faster entry point. You may not be ready to land a direct enterprise contract with a Fortune 15 company, but a systems integrator, staffing firm, or facilities prime that already holds a Cigna contract can bring you in as a subcontractor. That spend counts toward Cigna's diverse-supplier numbers, which gives the prime a reason to use you. If a direct deal feels out of reach, ask Cigna's primes whether they have a Tier 2 program. It's a real door, and it's less crowded.
The realistic on-rampHere's the order that works, instead of registering and hoping:
- Get certified. Pick the certification that matches your ownership: NMSDC for MBE, WBENC for WBE, NGLCC for LGBTBE, Disability:IN for DOBE, a veteran certification for VBE or SDVBE. This is the prerequisite that makes the rest of the program reachable.
- Sharpen your capability story. Map what you sell to the categories a health insurer actually buys, IT, professional services, facilities, marketing, clinical support, and write a capability statement a category manager can act on.
- Register on the Inclusive Supply Chain portal at cigna.supplierone.co with your certifications and codes attached.
- Make contact with the supplier-diversity team. Email InclusiveSupplyChain@TheCignaGroup.com, attend the council events where The Cigna Group's team shows up (NMSDC and WBENC national and regional events), and get on their radar as a person, not a database row.
- Pursue CSMPP or a Tier 2 relationship depending on where you are. CSMPP if you want the executive-mentor track. Tier 2 through a Cigna prime if you want faster, smaller first work.
The Cigna Group has stated an aspirational goal of $1 billion in diverse supplier spend, targeted around 2025. Whether or not that exact figure holds in current reporting, the takeaway for you is that the buyer has a real, funded reason to find certified diverse suppliers. Your job is to be findable, certified, and in front of the right buyer when a need lands in your category.
Don't stop at one corporationThe Cigna Group is one buyer. The same certification that qualifies you here qualifies you across dozens of other corporate programs running on the same logic, the same councils, and often the same SupplierOne-style portals. The process you just learned, get certified, register, build relationships, chase Tier 2, repeats with small variations at every Fortune 500 supplier-diversity program.
Browse the corporate program directory to find the other buyers that accept your certification and run programs like Cigna's, so one certification turns into a pipeline instead of a single application. If you want the broader playbook for breaking into these programs, start with how to get into corporate supplier diversity programs. And once your certifications are in hand, list your business in our supplier directory so corporate buyers searching for diverse suppliers can find you the same way Cigna's buyers search their own portal.
