The blockchain challenge

Insurers need to change their thinking about customers and products if they are to get the most out of blockchain, according to Ranvir Saggu, chief executive officer and co-founder of Blocksure, at the Intelligent InsurTECH Europe 2018 conference in London today.

According to Saggu, blockchain offers a number of key advantages, such as allowing insurers to do something only once and preventing time-consuming or costly replication of processes, such as documents being sent just once. He stressed that Blocksure drives innovation.

Some of the problems with current insurance systems include legacy systems, and manual data processing that can lead to high error rates. Saggu claimed that for some companies between 30 and 60 percent of customer premiums are consumed by distribution and processing costs.

The benefits of moving to blockchain processes include a 30 to 50 percent reduction in back office costs and transaction speeds of seconds, not days or even months. In addition, data quality and governance can be vastly improved, allowing a full auditability of data.

Saggu highlighted a number of challenges to the blockchain market in the near future, identifying four in particular: some people think that blockchain is the same as bitcoin; tech capabilities remain an issue for some companies; others are trying to apply blockchain to current business models; and finally there is a reluctance to change in some parts of the industry.

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