First blockchain platform for marine insurance launches

Insurwave, a blockchain platform to support marine hull insurance is now being used by members of the marine industry.

Built by a joint venture between EY and Guardtime, Insurwave leverages blockchain and distributed ledger technologies Microsoft Azure infrastructure and ACORD data standards.

In an increasingly complex and ever evolving risk landscape, global businesses will use the platform to transform how they manage risk across their organisation, and how they work with brokers and re/insurers, the companies claim.

The platform which is supported by Willis Towers Watson, XL Catlin, MS Amlin is expected to facilitate more than half a million automated ledger transactions and 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, the platform establishes a first of its kind digital insurance value chain, according to a joint company statement.

Martin Henley, chief information officer, XL Catlin, said: “With this blockchain, we are bringing together — for the first time — all the parties of the insurance value chain on a single platform. Ultimately, through the use of internet of things (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. Those are tangible wins for our clients, no matter their industry. And with the platform going live, we are now ready to start working on opening it up to other insurance segments.”

Danish transport giant 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.

Lars Henneberg, A.P. Møller-Maersk head of risk and insurance, commented: "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”.

“Operating around 350 owned container vessels across the world, marine insurance takes up considerable resources for us. Moving it 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," Henneberg noted.

Paul Taffinder, director of strategy and innovation, MS Amlin, said: “As a business, we are continuously looking to find new ways of doing things to further improve our client proposition. The success of the marine blockchain platform is a concrete example of where this innovative technology is being deployed to drive positive change in the insurance industry.”

The first phase of Insurwave rollout is focused on marine insurance, and EY, Guardtime and Microsoft plan to roll it out to other types of business insurance for the marine cargo, global logistics, aviation and energy sectors.

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