buying life insurance lead

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: CRM Continues to Gain Traction Among European Insurers
  A 2Q08 Gartner study found accelerated CRM traction among European general and life insurers. Strategy development and IT investment are anticipated during the next 12 months, as insurers focus on getting to know their customers and improving customer interactions.
• Findings: In 2009, Health Insurers Will Invest in BPM Tools to Enhance the Customer Service Process
  The pressure to deliver more-compelling value to consumers, and attract and maintain members, is driving the need for business process management in customer service. Healthcare insurers want BPM tools that will deliver the agility required to enhance and integrate customer service processes.
• Real-Time Claims Adjudication Is Neither Real nor Adjudication
  Achieving RTCA is about more than just changing technology and business processes for U.S. health insurers. It requires realigning stakeholders' expectations. Managing these expectations is a challenge that must be met for health insurers to achieve true RTCA.
• Q&A: Healthcare Insurers Fine-Tune Their Risk Management Fundamentals
  Recognizing that the 2008 economic downturn will affect their industry, healthcare insurers are looking to button down their risk management fundamentals, such as gathering risk exposures, assessing the degree and tolerance of risk, identifying countermeasures, and developing a communication plan.
• New Vendors, Products Take Aim at Healthcare Insurer Core Administrative Issues
  A new group of vendors is emerging in the healthcare insurer core administrative systems market. Their products use rule-based, workflow-oriented technologies to help healthcare insurers better respond to changing business requirements through increased flexibility.
• The New Wave of BI Solutions for Healthcare Insurers
  Health insurers are drowning in data and ad hoc reports that do not provide insight to make business decisions. Business intelligence solutions with analytic capabilities and combining financial, clinical and consumer data are needed to control costs, optimize use and meet compliance requirements.
• Predicts 2009: Insurers Face Opportunities and Challenges in Coping With a Tough Economy
  In 2009 and beyond, Gartner foresees a buyer's market for insurance software, insurers' need to act immediately on ICD-10 conversion, and insurers' growing demand for risk management and compliance systems.
• How Solvency II Will Transform European Insurance Markets by 2018, and How IT Can Respond
  European insurers face heterogeneous market conditions and business challenges across the region. The upcoming Solvency II regulation will be a catalyst for further changes, forcing insurers to plan their business and IT strategies for Solvency II now.
• New Directions for Distribution Among U.S. P&C Insurers
  Property and casualty insurers have been broadening their distribution network and adding new technologies to support sales effectiveness during the past few years. A recent Gartner study found that strategy changes are anticipated and technological investments in distribution will rise in 2009.
• How U.S. Insurance Actuaries Perceive Their Relationship With IT, and How It Can Be Improved
  According to a recent Gartner survey, insurance actuarial departments and their IT counterparts need greater communication and understanding between the groups. Actuaries from life, health, and property and casualty insurers provide practical advice on how to improve IT interaction and performance.
• Case Study: How a Dutch Insurer Increased Revenue With SaaS
  A Dutch funeral insurer implemented a new policy administration system from LeanApps as software as a service to replace a legacy application and to eliminate various IT and business obstacles. A challenge was to integrate the SaaS component with the IT applications that remained in-house.
• MarketScope for Insurance Incentive Compensation Management Applications
  Interest in ICM has expanded from life insurers to P&C insurers, and from North America to more-mature markets in Europe. However, actual demand remains uneven, and market consolidation is occurring. Seven ICM vendors that are targeting the insurance sector are evaluated from a global perspective.
• The Evolution and Refocusing of IT Among European Insurers
  A 2Q08 Gartner study of insurers in the U.K., France and Germany found that organizational enhancements, including legacy replacement and modernization, BPM, and product life cycle management, were top priorities in 2008-2009. Legacy challenges and shifting market conditions were top of mind.
• Health Insurer Executives Ask Insightful Questions at the Healthcare IT Summit
  Health insurer executives pressed Gartner analysts on how to evaluate emerging vendors and how to tackle business intelligence and care management. Cost optimization questions also arose as executives question the use of business process outsourcing for cost-cutting efforts.
• Underwriting Automation Falls Short for Complex P&C Commercial Line Products
  Despite continued advancement in the functionality of underwriting applications, underwriting point solution technology investments to date have failed to yield organic improvement and have increased underwriter workload for Tier 1 insurers that underwrite complex commercial line products.
• Multiple Core Administrative Systems Continue to Plague Healthcare Insurers
  North American healthcare insurers are maintaining multiple core administrative systems and have no formal consolidation plans. This will exacerbate application and data integration, information management, ICD-10 adoption, vendor management challenges, and, most of all, the cost of doing business.
• The Transformation of Marketing, Sales and Service for Healthcare Insurers
  Achieving business growth in a highly competitive market requires healthcare insurers to transform the front office and focus efforts on more-efficient automated marketing, sales and customer service processes.
• Replacing Legacy Billing Applications Is a Strategic Imperative for Insurers
  Replacing legacy billing applications in today's economic environment creates many opportunities for life and P&C insurers. Benefits include operational business process improvements and better customer service.
• Real-Time Claims Adjudication Is Neither Real nor Adjudication
  Achieving RTCA is about more than just changing technology and business processes for U.S. health insurers. It requires realigning stakeholders' expectations. Managing these expectations is a challenge that must be met for health insurers to achieve true RTCA.
• The Transformation of Marketing, Sales and Service for Healthcare Insurers
  Achieving business growth in a highly competitive market requires healthcare insurers to transform the front office and focus efforts on more-efficient automated marketing, sales and customer service processes.
• Defining and Exposing the Value of Health Insurer Patient Communication Tools
  Patient communication tools, such as personal health records, patient decision aids and personal health management tools, are attracting significant attention in the healthcare industry. However, definitions are confusing for healthcare insurers, and measuring the value remains a challenge.
• Case Study: P&C Insurer Embraces E-Signatures to Improve Direct Sales
  E-signature use is lo