A new report by Z/Yen, a commercial think-tank, consultancy, and venture firm and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a multinational professional services network, has revealed that blockchain holds huge potential for wholesale insurance market.

The official release said that the report is based on interviews with insurers, reinsurers, regulators, insurers and trade bodies across the global wholesale insurance industry. The study said that blockchain has enormous potential to deliver substantial value for financial services.

“Wholesale insurers have recognized the benefits of blockchain technology and have identified where they’d like to see solutions implemented. The challenge now is to build on this solid beginning,” Jonathan Howe, UK insurance leader at PwC said. “We must remember that blockchain will not be the best solution for all insurance processes –we must look past the hype. The key is identifying where it will provide value. For some processes it will be game changing. Blockchain has huge promise to be a force for good – it is an enabler for the wholesale insurance sector to continue its role in underpinning the global economy.”

The global industry survey by PwC’s Belfast-based blockchain technology team and Z/Yen was the first initiative which was intended to determine how the distributed ledger technology could revolutionize global insurance industry.

The report highlights three key areas where the impact of blockchain technology on wholesale insurance could be high:

• Placement Process
   
• Claims Management
   
• Compliance Tasks

The report includes a PwC-developed proof of concept, to show the potential applications of blockchain technology to solve business problems in wholesale insurance.

“With a new technology that is attracting as much attention as blockchain it is important to be able to demonstrate to people how the technology works. The Proof of Concept we have built picks up on many of the themes in the report,” Steve Webb, financial services blockchain leader at PwC said, talking about the technical Proof of Concept developed by PwC.

Z/Yen is London’s leading commercial think-do tank promoting societal advance through better finance and technology.  It helps organizations make better decisions about enhancing reward, controlling risk and increasing certainty.