According to latest reports, American insurance giant MetLife, Inc. has joined R3 blockchain consortium that has more than 50 of the world's largest financial institutions among its membership, focused on designing and exploring blockchain technology for global financial markets.

According to the reports by IBTimes.com, MetLife will be the first multinational insurer and 60th member of the distributed ledger consortium. The insurance company will partner with R3 to explore potentials of blockchain technology and how it can be leveraged in the insurance environment in order to streamline activities including new investments management, business processing, policy administration, customer payments among others.

"R3's work has proven how blockchain technology can disrupt how business is done today. MetLife is proud to be the first multinational insurer and 60th member to join this prestigious group," Marty Lippert, executive vice president and head of MetLife's Global Technology & Operations said as reported by IBT.

MetLife joins the global network of R3 partners united in its lab environment, the R3 Lab and Research Centre which is established for collaborative research and testing of technologies that are inspired by distributed and shared-ledger.

"The addition of a major insurance player such as MetLife is a testament to the growing interest in distributed ledger technology among the non-bank financial services community,” David Rutter, CEO of R3 said. Our consortium is now one of the largest of its kind ever assembled in the financial technology space, with some of the world's largest banks and financial institutions working together to deliver cutting-edge solutions that can be applied to the benefit of all end users and their clients."

Thomson Reuters recently joined R3 consortium, becoming the first news media and data provider to be a part of it. In April, R3 introduced Corda – a distributed ledger platform designed from the ground up to record, manage and synchronize financial agreements between regulated financial institutions.