Marsh joins B3i blockchain peer Ethereum

Insurance broker Marsh has joined the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA).

Ethereum has more than 400 member companies and seeks to create open industry standards and frameworks for blockchain applications based on the core Ethereum platform.

Guy Carpenter & Marsh had already become a member of B3i in October 2017, a collaboration of insurers and reinsurers formed to explore the potential of blockchain. Its current 38 members include Munich Re, Swiss Re and Zurich Insurance.

A blockchain or distributed ledger can serve as a shared record between counterparties and can coordinate and reduce complexity in their shared accounting and settlement (A&S) processes. Thus, the technology can reduce operating costs and speed up processing across this insurance distribution chain.

Applying blockchain to the global re/insurance market could deliver operational cost savings of 10 percent to 25 percent or $20 billion to $50 billion each year, according to a report by blockchain solutions provider R3 and ChainThat.

Marsh is the first insurance broker to be part of the Ethereum platform, which includes organisations in technology, financial services, health care, energy, manufacturing, and a number of fast-growing startups. Marsh will collaborate with the alliance members in leading and driving the adoption of blockchain applications.

“We see the potential of blockchain technology as having a game-changing impact on the risk management and insurance industry — one that enables the creation of new business models, products, and platforms that better serve our clients in the new economy,” said Sastry Durvasula, chief digital officer at Marsh. “By joining the EEA, we will be able to collaborate with other members to explore new solutions and disruptive use cases, while participating in the evolution of Ethereum into enterprise-grade blockchain technology.”

Marsh also recently joined The Institutes RiskBlock Alliance, a risk management and insurance industry enterprise-level blockchain consortium that seeks to leverage the blockchain to lower industry transaction costs while increasing the speed and security of data transfers among customers, industry stakeholders, and third parties.

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