ZhongAn Insurance will explore blockchain for a long time and has established a blockchain laboratory with Fudan University

According to Sina Technology, on the morning of November 2, ZhongAn Insurance, which was funded by Ant Financial, Tencent, Ping An of China and other companies, announced that it has officially established a wholly-owned subsidiary, ZhongAn Information Technology Services Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as ZhongAn Technology).

Jiang Xing, Chairman of ZhongAn Technology, said at the press conference: "ZhongAn Technology's mission is to become an accelerator for inclusive finance and healthcare. We hope to support the informationization upgrade of the entire insurance ecosystem, lead the research and development and application of new technologies and methods such as blockchain and artificial intelligence, and help ZhongAn's internal and external partners innovate and incubate entrepreneurship."

As China's first Internet insurance company, ZhongAn Insurance received US$934 million (approximately RMB 5.775 billion) in Series A financing from five investment institutions including Morgan Stanley, with a valuation of US$8 billion (approximately RMB 50 billion).

According to reports, ZhongAn Technology will export a blockchain cloud platform, based on the two major propositions of finance and health, with trust, connection and acceleration as the three major missions, and insist on long-term exploration in the four fields of artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing and big data. Within ZhongAn Technology, this is also known as the "1234" plan.

As a technology provider, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin also expressed his views.

"I am very happy to see that ZhongAn Technology has integrated Ethereum technology to build an open blockchain application platform and actively explored feasible applications in areas such as China's insurance industry. I also hope that more and more Chinese companies and teams will enter this field and carry out valuable explorations," he said.

At the press conference, ZhongAn Technology stated that it has recently launched a public welfare protection platform "Mutual Bang". On this platform, insurance ecosystem partners confirm data ownership through blockchain technology and can customize personalized mutual aid communities for Internet companies, industry associations, public welfare platforms, vertical groups, etc. ZhongAn Technology will provide technical support such as blockchain, image recognition, and smart contracts during this period.

At the press conference, ZhongAn Technology and more than 20 business partners jointly initiated the establishment of the Shanghai Blockchain Enterprise Development Promotion Alliance, whose partners include banks, credit reporting, payment, consumer finance, Internet technology, data security, communications, scientific research institutions, etc. The alliance aims to explore the development of blockchain technology in commercial applications and promote technology inclusion and innovation incubation.

In addition, ZhongAn Technology has also teamed up with the School of Computer Science of Fudan University to establish a "Blockchain and Information Security Joint Laboratory" to conduct underlying theoretical research on blockchain-related technologies and help ZhongAn Technology improve its blockchain technology capabilities.