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Due to the economic recession and the potential for increased health insurance costs brought about by health care reform, many employers are beginning to view self-funded health care plans as a more attractive option than fully insured plans.

Here’s a recent list of personnel accomplishments in the insurance industry.

Financial planners become successful through a fierce commitment to building their practices. But too few principals proactively plan for when — and how — they will one move on. In failing to do so, they run the risk of leaving their firms on someone else’s terms, says Scott Slater, managing director, business consulting, for Schwab Advisor Services. “And that’s somewhat ironic,” he says, “because they are planners.”

Americans are slowly shifting toward buying insurance direct rather than meeting with an insurance professional face-to-face. More than one in four adults prefer to purchase life insurance online, over the phone or through the mail, according to a New LIFE and LIMRA study released Wednesday.

Rural Americans are more likely to suffer from chronic health conditions such as diabetes, heart problems and cancer, and face greater difficulty getting quality health care than their urban counterparts, according to a report released Wednesday.

Despite the generally slow job market, three out of four organizations lost high-performing employees they did not want to lose during the past year, according to a survey by Right Management.

A U.S. health official overseeing the new insurance exchanges program said he expects recently released regulatory guidelines to spur activity in the states this summer.

Liz Rowell, a senior consultant at Benz Communications, offers benefits pros tips for using health care reform’s focus on preventive care to their strategic advantage and force employees to get serious about screenings.

Recently, I came across a news item from U.S. News & World Report that, based on research from the Society for Human Resource Management, detailed 21 workplace benefits that are rapidly disappearing from view—for a variety of reasons.

The majority of Generation X and Y policy owners and almost half of Boomer policy owners who have visited their life company’s website sought online services from their insurers, according to LIMRA. “With Internet usage growing almost 150% in the last decade, it is vital that companies understand who their online audience is and what their expectations are and develop a website that offers the important services that these customers say they want,” says Mary Art, LIMRA research director, technology in marketing and distribution research.