Leading consulting firm EY and blockchain company Guardtime, in collaboration with A.P. Møller-Maersk A/S, ACORD, Microsoft, MS Amlin, Willis Towers Watson and XL Catlin, have announced the launch of a blockchain-based platform for the marine insurance sector.

The launch follows a 20-week proof of concept, EY said in its official release. Built on Microsoft Azure global cloud technology, the platform would help improve the capital and gain efficiencies of insurers by increasing transparency and reducing manual data entry or reconciliation and administration costs.

The first of its kind in the insurance industry, the platform connects clients, brokers, insurers, and third parties to distributed common ledgers that capture data about identities, risk, and exposures, and integrates this information with insurance contracts. It creates and maintains asset data from multiple parties; links data to policy contracts; receives and acts upon information that results in a pricing or a business process change; connects client assets, transactions and payments; and captures and validates up-to-date first notification or loss data.

“Blockchain’s potential to transform the insurance ecosystem has always been clear. What we have done is to move forward from potential to reality. This solution is the first to apply blockchain’s transparency, security and standardization to marine insurance and is ready for commercial use. We look forward to deploying this technology across the marine insurance industry and are exploring how these findings and insights will be applied to other specialty insurance markets and beyond,” Shaun Crawford, EY Global Insurance Leader, said.

The global blockchain platform is planned to be implemented from 2018 onward. The initial phased rollout will involve deploying the benefits of blockchain for end-to-end use across the marine industry.

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