The state’s second-biggest health insurer has a buzzy new name

Tufts Health Plan and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, which merged in January, will be called Point32Health

The logo for Point32Health, the new company formed by the merger of Tufts Health Plan and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care.Point32Health

The company formed by the merger of two big Massachusetts health insurers has a buzzy new name: Point32Health.

Tufts Health Plan and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care merged in January but did not name the new company they created, until Wednesday. The new moniker refers to the 32 points on a compass and was chosen to highlight the company’s stated goal of helping people navigate health care.

“We wanted something unique and distinct that would stand out in the marketplace,” said Richard O’Connor, chief marketing officer of Point32Health. “We wanted to do something different.”

If Point32 sounds more like a tech startup than an insurance company, it’s deliberate. Executives hired the branding firm Lippincott to help them choose an “innovative” and “more future-sounding” name, O’Connor said.

But the Tufts and Harvard Pilgrim brands — well-known in New England — are not going away any time soon. Individual health plans will not be rebranded for the foreseeable future, O’Connor said. So if a person has a Tufts HMO, for example, or a Harvard Pilgrim PPO, the names of those plans will not change.

The 4,400 employees of Tufts and Harvard Pilgrim will officially work for Point32Health, and e-mail addresses will change to reflect the new name.

The company also plans to advertise as Point32Health, eventually including a sign at Fenway Park.

The company’s new Canton headquarters, scheduled to open in the fall, will bear the new name. About 2,300 employees will work from Canton, most of them on a hybrid schedule that includes working from home some of the time.

Point32Health has more than 2 million members insured by Tufts or Harvard Pilgrim health plans. It is the second-biggest health insurer in the state after Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts.

Next month the company is slated to get a new chief executive, Cain A. Hayes, who previously led Gateway Health in Pittsburgh.

Executives have yet to announce any changes to health plans or services and said they are trying not to disrupt customers and members as they work to combine operations.