Generali, Allianz place reinsurance contracts on B3i blockchain

B3i, the blockchain insurance industry initiative, has revealed that 30 reinsurance contracts have been concluded on its platform by major re/insurers and brokers, including some of the most complex catastrophe excess of loss (XoL) reinsurance treaties.

A total of 9 insurers, 4 major brokerage firms, and 8 reinsurers, including Generali and Allianz, participated in the placements, which were conducted as a parallel run with 1/1/20 renewals or as a re-creation.

“Our company has tested the potential of B3i’s application recreating the placement of the Group Cat programme after the end of the 2020 renewal," said Alberto Valenti, head of group reinsurance at Generali. "Generali has extended the parallel run also to 2 selected intra-group reinsurance Cat programmes observing several potential benefits in adopting the application for the intra-group transactions. Our main brokers and reinsurers have been involved.”

Silvio Tschudi, senior retrocession manager at Allianz Re, stated: “B3i’s platform shows what’s possible for greatly easing the placement process for all parties involved, and it’s very promising. Working with our brokers and reinsurers during the placement process, across the B3i platform, has shown improved efficiencies and complete contract certainty.”

B3i currently has 20 shareholders, all insurers or reinsurers from Europe, Asia, North and South America, and Africa. The company said that it will conduct a fundraise in 2020 which will be open to insurers, brokers, reinsurers, and service providers.

In 2020, B3i intends to continue to develop its reinsurance platform to include additional types of reinsurance and modules for technical accounting and claims, thus covering the full lifecycle of a reinsurance contract. Further, B3i is looking to expand into large commercial applications.

“The reinsurance transactions show that distributed ledger technology will be a powerful solution for insurers, brokers, and reinsurers to grow their business while creating material efficiencies over existing technology. B3i offers the only DLT-based solution in production and capable of handling reinsurance placements today,” said John Carolin, CEO of B3i.

“We invite all participants in the insurance industry to work with B3i to improve risk transfer using distributed ledger technology - whether by investing and joining our governance, by using the platform for transactions, or by partnering to develop new solutions.”

B3i’s chairman, Antony Elliot, added: “B3i has always been by the industry, for the industry. Our global shareholders and B3i’s talented team have built the only application that uses distributed ledger technology to facilitate reinsurance placements. B3i looks forward to expanding our engagement with insurers, brokers, and reinsurers to develop the platform’s capabilities further considering reinsurance and commercial insurance use cases.”