The Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA) took part in a recent brainstorming session that was led by global blockchain technology consortium R3 along with 10 other major reinsurance companies.

According to the official release, the workshop that was held at Bermuda Business Development Agency (BDA) witnessed experts from technology, underwriting, and regulatory fields. The focus of the workshop was to explore ways in which distributed ledgers would provide Bermuda a leading role in the digital economy and fundamentally change their business.

“This isn’t a vendor choice or a technology choice issue that requires a take-it-or-leave-it decision—this is going to be a wholesale move by large parts of the market. What it translates into as a corporate advantage or loss is hard to say at this stage, but the opportunity cost of not being at the table could be significant,” Tim Grant, managing director of R3 and CEO of its Lab and Research Center (LRC) said.

R3 consortium will be presenting the workshop’s findings to the next board meeting of the Association of Bermuda Insurers and Reinsurers (ABIR) at the end of the month. The participants of the workshop welcomed the session’s peer collaboration and several noted their companies were already looking at distributed ledger technology (DLT) and its applications.

“Bermuda is a perfect ecosystem for fintech innovation and reinsurance is an industry with ‘pain points’ that DLT technology may be well-suited to remedy. When members are brought together in R3’s collaborative lab, working prototypes can be developed quickly, knowledge is shared efficiently and a faster route to production can be achieved,” Stafford Lowe, BDA consultant said.

Lowe also mentioned that the feedbacks and ideas from the workshop were used to generate many important hypotheses about where distributed ledger technology could offer Bermuda’s commercial re/insurance market significant benefits.

R3 consortium leads more than 60 central banks and other major financial institutions and focuses in developing blockchain applications for the financial services industry. Its members include JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, MetLife, Bank of America, Barclays, among others. The consortium hopes to extend its membership to include Bermuda re/insurance multinationals.