pacific life health insurance

Gartner: Insurance
The insurance industry faces massive technology transformation to support new business processes and respond to escalating customer requirements and regulatory pressures. Gartner's insurance research provides the actionable, in-context analysis and bottom-line guidance necessary to meet these challenges.

• Findings: "Proactive Customer Service" Using GISs Is a New Approach for Property and Home Insurance
  Geography information systems are critical in preparing for and responding to catastrophes and natural events. Location-based intelligence will help property and home insurers predict potential losses, affected areas and customers, and proactively service their customers in the event's aftermath.
• Top Health Insurer Business Topics for 2009
  To set appropriate project priorities in an unstable industry, health insurers must embrace new healthcare services and deployment models. Strategies for 2009 must include innovative technologies to support new care delivery models, social media, risk management and collaboration with providers.
• Healthcare Insurers Should Rethink Personal Health Record Strategies
  The challenges of deploying personal health records outweigh the benefits for health insurers. New partnership strategies must be crafted by health insurers to align with the reality that consumer choice of PHRs will reside with other trusted organizations.
• Future Use of Care Management Analytics
  A top priority for all healthcare insurers is having the ability to take data and turn it into actionable information. Care management analytics will provide credible methodologies for care management outcomes measurement and assist in providing actionable information for healthcare stakeholders.
• Healthcare Insurers Must Manage Provider Relationships as a Competitive Differentiator
  The provider network is a critical product differentiator between competing health insurance products. Management of this strategic asset can no longer be supported by isolated and fragmented applications focused on a tactical execution.
• The Interconnectivity of Commissions, Licensing and Performance Assessment in Insurance
  While interest in commission solutions has risen among insurers in the past two years, more functionality is needed to manage agents and intermediaries. Insurers must build comprehensive strategies for distribution management and find suitable solutions to support the end-to-end process.
• European General Insurers Begin to Embrace Claims Transformation
  A Gartner survey of general insurers in the U.K., France and Germany shows growing interest in technologies for claims processing. Although initiatives are on the rise, adoption remains low, and most insurers lack the investment needed to remain competitive and meet rising customer service demands.
• Insurance Online Customer Self-Service: A Moving Target
  Insurers have been investing in online customer self-service for years. As customers demand convenience and insurers look to drive down servicing costs and improve customer experiences, self-service sites will become an even bigger priority among life and P&C insurers.
• Creating a Comprehensive Service Strategy for Life Insurance and Annuities
  Life insurers have not deployed a comprehensive service strategy, but rather are creating point solutions for individual product, distribution and service silos. Failure to deliver a comprehensive service solution will undermine their ability to meet changing customer needs.
• The Business Impact of Social Computing on Life Insurance, Pension and Annuity Providers
  Social computing is rarely used by life insurance, pension and annuity providers today. However, to meet the increasing needs of customers and agents for personalization and interaction, insurers should begin to experiment with social computing technologies.
• Life and P&C Insurance Underwriting: System for Experts vs. Expert Systems
  Insurers have adopted the term "automated and exception-based processing," but many understand the term incorrectly. Life and P&C insurers should not look for expert systems to eliminate manual tasks and staff, but look for systems that enable underwriting experts to manage workload and time.
• Healthcare Insurers Must Manage Provider Relationships as a Competitive Differentiator
  The provider network is a critical product differentiator between competing health insurance products. Management of this strategic asset can no longer be supported by isolated and fragmented applications focused on a tactical execution.
• European General Insurers Begin to Embrace Claims Transformation
  A Gartner survey of general insurers in the U.K., France and Germany shows growing interest in technologies for claims processing. Although initiatives are on the rise, adoption remains low, and most insurers lack the investment needed to remain competitive and meet rising customer service demands.
• Creating a Comprehensive Service Strategy for Life Insurance and Annuities
  Life insurers have not deployed a comprehensive service strategy, but rather are creating point solutions for individual product, distribution and service silos. Failure to deliver a comprehensive service solution will undermine their ability to meet changing customer needs.
• Health Insurers Must Create Member Acquisition and Retention Strategies
  Effective CRM is not just about deploying sales, marketing and customer service technologies. Business strategies for member acquisition and retention are critical components that many health insurers have failed to create.
• Life Insurer Web Sites Are Still Web 2.0 Exclusion Zones
  A review of life insurers' and pension providers' Web sites in the U.S. and Europe shows a clear lack of Web 2.0 elements. Most Web sites don't create an exciting or engaging experience that stimulates consumers to become educated about insurance products or return to the site.
• Key Requirements for the Evolving Health Insurer Call Center
  A more strategic focus in processes and technology is critical to maximize the value of healthcare insurance call centers. In some cases, this may give insurers a competitive edge, but increasingly, it will be required simply to keep up with the rising expectations of customers.
• The Electronic Signature Solutions That Are Most Effective for Insurers' New Business Processes
  Both life and P&C insurers are considering electronic signatures as a means to streamline their new business processes. Gartner has examined the various e-signature options and has developed a decision framework to select the right solution for various distribution channels.
• Case Study: Fallon Community Health Plan Capitalizes on Integrated Care Management
  Fallon Community Health Plan struggled with eight care management systems that were not integrated. This infrastructure hampered its ability to streamline care management processes, add new care management programs and grow the business.
• Staffing Models and People Management: An Overlooked Problem in Insurance
  An underlying theme emerged at the 2008 annual ACORD LOMA conference: Insurers are focusing on process management and IT improvements without doing the hard work of managing employee, partner and consumer change.
• Case Study: How Provinzial Rheinland Insurance Transformed a Packaged Application
  The midsize German life insurer had to replace its legacy policy administration system. A packaged application met the functional requirements, but had to be transformed architecturally to comply with the insurer's service-oriented architecture.
• Healthcare Insurers Should Rethink Personal Health Record Strategies
  The challenges of deploying personal health records outweigh the be