The London’s insurance market has taken a move to incorporate blockchain technology for reinsurers using a claims record system.
The system has been developed by a consultancy, Z/Yen. Michael Mainelli of Z/Yen said that, “The system is really based on timestamping and auditing who has used this documents.” He added that, “There have always been suspicious that insurers could change the data on what the situation was in the past.” Z/Yen was behind one among the few other uses of blockchain in the UK insurance market.
But Blem, a company which makes IT systems for the industry is all set to become one of the companies to make use of blockchain in a live product. Blem’s CEO Gavin Blem says, “The opportunity that timestamping provides is certainly that the information provided to the reinsurer existed at a particular moment in time and has not been changed since.” The company will be using the technology to record permanently the details of claims, so that insurers and their reinsurers can divide the cost accurately between them.
Another start-up Safeshare has launched an insurance policy based on blockchain in March this year. It was aimed for people who rent out extra or spare rooms in their homes for offices, through Vrumi website. Using of blockchain helps Vrumi and Safeshare to permanently record the transaction details that have taken place so far.
Michael Mainelli of Z/Yen added that, “2016 has been the year we have moved from proof-of-concept projects for mutual distributed ledgers to working systems.”
There are high hopes that blockchain would be widely used in insurance though blockchain development is still at its early stages.
