It was back in October 2016, when industry giants — including Aegon, Allianz, Munich Re, Swiss Re and Zurich — have came together to launch the Blockchain Insurance Industry Initiative B3i to explore the potential of distributed ledger technologies to better serve clients through faster, more convenient and secure services. The group said that blockchain could be used to streamline paperwork and reconciliations for (re-) insurance contracts and accelerate information and money flows, while greatly improving auditability.
The system would see establishing of trusted relationships among all participants to provide a consistent, automatic contract execution environment (smart contracts) where transactions and contracts are stored on a shared ledger, thus reducing the administrative workload of multiple stakeholders to ensure contract consistency and execution.
“Blockchain technology shows most of its potential only if it’s applied in a network of peers,” Harald Rosenberger, Head of Innovation at Munich Re, said at the time. “Therefore we see a huge benefit for the insurance industry in doing this together in the Blockchain Insurance Industry Initiative B3i. With B3i we are in the position to explore and shape the future use of Blockchain and to set the necessary standards for a true digitalization of insurance.”
New members join in
Roughly a year later, on September 10th 2017, a working market testing prototype solution was launched at the Monte Carlo RVS conference. Shortly thereafter, new members of the B3i initiative were announced, and the group now attracts companies from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and the Caribbean.
“I am very pleased to welcome 23 new companies to B3i”, Paul Meeusen of B3i said in a statement. “In less than a year B3i has become truly global, both in terms of the work we are undertaking and the companies we represent. We look forward to working with the new entrants who will take part in our market testing, and to learning from each other’s expertise and experience”.
The new entrants include AIA, AIG, Aon, Chubb, Covéa, Everest Re, Gen Re, Guy Carpenter & Marsh, JLT Re, Leadway Assurance, LocalTapiola, Mapfre Re, Navigators, PartnerRe, QBE Re, SAHAM Assurance, Sava Re, Takaful Emarat, TigerRisk, Trust Re, UnipolSai and Willis Re.
B3i simulation
Market testing of the prototype will commence this month, following onboarding and the provision of training to all member companies. Each company in the group will simulate the creation and management of property catastrophe insurance contracts in order to test post placement processes. This will apply from the setting up of the contract, through to the automated calculation for payment of claims.
Upon testing the platform, participating companies will provide feedback to contribute to the development of a viable production platform for the insurance and re-insurance industry by the second half of 2018.
Plans for 2018
B3i will also embark on developing and prototyping further use cases during next year for market adoption. This will be done by leveraging the collective views of the expanded membership to prioritize projects which extend beyond the current P&C reinsurance horizon.
Also at the beginning of 2018, B3i will put in place a new structure designed to better serve its members and future platform users. This will take the form of a limited liability company structure, with a research and development function and commercial operations. Further details about this will be released in the near future…