Five insurance giants launch blockchain project B3i

Rage Review : Five insurance giants, Aegon, Allianz, Munich Re, Swiss Re and Zurich Insurance Group, jointly launched the blockchain initiative B3i to study the fit between blockchain and the insurance industry. Although it is currently impossible to predict the results and winners, it seems less important. What is important is the marginal effect that new technology competition brings to enterprises and society.

Translation: Annie_Xu

Aegon, Allianz, Munich Re, Swiss Re and Zurich Insurance Group manage tens of trillions of dollars in assets. The five insurance giants jointly launched the blockchain initiative B3i to study the feasibility of blockchain in the insurance industry and develop proof of concept for insurance based on blockchain.

Christof Mascher

Christof Mascher, Chief Operating Officer of Allianz, said:

“It is great to see Allianz working with other insurance industry players to research emerging technologies such as blockchain. This initiative can provide new operating models based on blockchain technology, helping us improve transparency, efficiency and customer experience.”

The combination of blockchain and the insurance industry has the potential to automate the claims process, thereby saving a lot of costs and greatly transforming the insurance industry; because blockchain smart contracts can replace manual work with automatically executed code.

For example, FlightDelay (a decentralized smart contract application based on Ethereum) uses blockchain-based self-executing smart contracts to replace human labor. Users enter the premium on a blockchain-based website, and the compensation amount is estimated using a zero-sum algorithm. Finally, Oraclize (a prediction service that connects the Internet and smart contracts) provides data feedback and verifies the results.

Makoto Inoue

Makoto Inoue, a web developer at SimplyBusiness, the largest corporate insurance provider in the UK, is also an Ethereum enthusiast. His smart contract-based code vulnerability reward mechanism, BountyMax, won the Thomson Reuter Award. In the future, he will build a more complex system based on this project.

"During the proof of concept phase, each contract holder sets their own default reward, and the amount will not be large unless you have that much capacity."

"We integrate all the contracts and set up combined rewards. As long as you crack one contract, you can get rewards for all contracts."

“Once enough default data is collected, insurance companies will provide insurance services, and the bonus will be higher than the sum of all bonuses; smart contracts will assume the risk themselves, and we can verify the insurance rights (because the blockchain will show all the data)”.

However, the technology is still in its infancy and may first be adopted in the form of alliances. Therefore, Harald Rosenberger, director of innovation at Munich Re, said:

“The potential of blockchain technology can only be realized when applied to peer-to-peer networks. Therefore, it will be of great benefit for insurance practitioners to jointly participate in the blockchain insurance initiative B3i. Because we can explore and develop future-oriented blockchain applications and set the necessary standards for the future digitalization of the insurance industry.”

However, Inoue said that it seems that most financial companies view blockchain as a tool for sharing data on a private chain; however, as long as automatic payments are achieved between insurance companies and beneficiaries and the fit between blockchain smart contracts and the insurance industry is explored, the use cases in the insurance industry may be more diverse.

However, the insurance industry is just beginning to explore, mainly building technology development alliances, with individual independent companies taking the lead in initiatives. It is still unknown who will be the first to change the insurance industry between traditional companies that are upgrading their technology and start-ups that have discovered the advantages of blockchain technology.