The Blockchain Insurance Industry Initiative or B3i has is going to launch market beta-testing of its reinsurance blockchain prototype.

Launched last year by Aegon, Allianz, Munich Re, Swiss Re, and Zurich, B3i aims to help insurers and reinsurers to get a better insight into the applicability of the blockchain technology in the insurance market. The effort grew to 15 members earlier this year.

The group has been working on a joint distributed ledger for reinsurance transactions driven by blockchain technology. The platform uses state-of-the-art distributed ledger technology (DLT) to enable secure, confidential, and efficient transactions in a blockchain network. The short-term focus of the platform is on handling reinsurance contracts.

B3i publically showcased the fully functional beta-version of the integrated blockchain solution for the re/insurance industry at the 61st Monte Carlo RVS conference. The group also shared the details of its vision, an industry business case, and planned next steps.

“Over the past four months, a dedicated, combined team drawn from B3i member firms has produced a working prototype covering the core functionalities required to enable a distributed smart contract management system for Property Cat XoL contracts. The deployment architecture is already close to a production-ready environment and the team is preparing for feature enhancements of the prototype and a first deployment into production in 2018,” Paul Meeusen of B3i said.

In addition, the B3i team has also developed an industry business case for the platform across the whole value chain. The companies believe that the solution could lead to a productivity gain of up to 30 percent. B3i’s Sylvain De Crom said that all parties involved will gain from this efficiency, meaning that brokers, insurers, and reinsurers will all benefit from lower administration costs and will be able to offer more attractive rates and fees in the future.

B3i plans to launch a market beta-testing program for the prototype starting in October 2017. The insurance industry participants (insurers, brokers, reinsurers) will be granted access to a “sandbox” environment to simulate the creation and settlement of contracts. All participants will also gain access to B3i user group workshops until the end of 2017, the release said.

B3i is also considering to create a more permanent operation within a legal entity in 2018, in order to further develop the infrastructure and processes to enable decision agility, talent acquisition, and future platform R&D capabilities.

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