Marine hull insurance gets new blockchain solution. Source: Shutterstock

EY and Guardtime build new insurance blockchain platform

HAVE you been reading about how blockchain solutions can make life so much easier especially for shipping and marine transport companies?

Going digital has added benefits for companies in this sector because of the complicated paperwork they deal with every day.

To capitalize on the opportunity, EY and Guardtime built a joint venture to develop a new blockchain platform to support marine hull insurance.

The new solution is called Insurwave. It is built on Microsoft Azure infrastructure and complies with ACORD data standards.

A.P. Moller – Maersk contributed to the development of the blockchain technology as a pilot client and is continuing on the platform with its marine hull portfolio.

Insurwave is designed to support more than half a million automated ledger transactions and will help manage risk for more than 1,000 commercial vessels in the first year.

By connecting participants in a secure, private network with an accurate, immutable audit trail and services to execute processes, developers hope that the platform will establish a first of its kind digital insurance value chain.

“Our ambition is to drive the digital transformation of the transport and logistics industry and we see this platform as a testament to the value that can be extracted from streamlining areas of our industry that still rely on manual and often complex procedures,” said Lars Henneberg, A.P. Møller-Maersk A/S Head of Risk and Insurance.

Henneberg highlighted the fact that marine insurance takes up considerable resources since they operate around 350 owned container vessels across the world.

“Moving that workload to this platform is helping us automate manual processes and alleviate a range of inefficiencies and frictional costs in the way we have used to trade marine insurance,” added Henneberg.

According to leaders, this solution (and the technology) is all set to disrupt the industry.

Alastair Swift, CEO, Willis Towers Watson GB said:

“We are delighted to be at the forefront of blockchain technology which has the potential to revolutionize the insurance industry. This is the first insurance transaction that has been undertaken through blockchain, simplifying and streamlining the transactional process and creating added value for our clients.

“We strongly believe this is an industry dynamic and that all carriers and brokers should engage in blockchain to drive improved transactional efficiency and innovation for our clients.”

The fact that Insurwave brings all the parties of the insurance value chain together on a single platform is something that’s exciting to industry leaders.

“Ultimately, through the use of IoT and smart contracts, policies will be updated automatically to reflect the risks covered; and this combination of technologies will help improve efficiency in claims assessment and payment,” suggested Martin Henley, Chief Information Officer, XL Catlin.

Willis Towers Watson, XL Catlin, and MS Amlin are already using Insurwave to better manage their insurance portfolio, in this increasingly complex and ever-evolving risk landscape. They expect the platform to transform how they manage risk across their organization, and how they work with brokers and (re)insurers.