Following few months since the announcement of the world’s first blockchain platform for marine insurance, the platform is now available for commercial use with a view to be expanded into other types of business insurance including marine cargo, global logistics, aviation and energy sectors.
The partners involved are EY, Guardtime, A.P. Møller-Maersk, Microsoft and insurance industry leaders Willis Towers Watson, XL Catlin, MS Amlin and ACORD.
Insurwave, built by a joint venture between EY and Guardtime, leverages blockchain and distributed ledger technologies Microsoft Azure infrastructure and ACORD data standards. The platform is expected to support more than half a million automated ledger transactions and help manage risk for more than 1,000 commercial vessels in the first year.
By connecting participants in a secure, private network with an accurate, immutable audit trail and services to execute processes, the platform establishes a first of its kind digital insurance value chain.
A.P. Moller – Maersk contributed to the development of the blockchain technology as a pilot client and is continuing on the platform with its marine hull portfolio. Lars Henneberg, A.P. Møller-Maersk A/S Head of Risk and Insurance, said:
Our ambition is to drive the digital transformation of the transport and logistics industry and we see this platform as a testament to the value that can be extracted from streamlining areas of our industry that still rely on manual and often complex procedures…Moving it to this platform is helping us automate manual processes and alleviate a range of inefficiencies and frictional costs in the way we have used to trade marine insurance.
Matthew Kerner, general manager, Azure blockchain engineering at Microsoft, noted:
Blockchain is opening up new possibilities for how enterprises do business with one another, turning complex processes into cost-saving business efficiencies. Microsoft is thrilled to work alongside EY, Guardtime, Maersk and marine insurance industry leaders to bring this platform into production on Azure, proving the enterprise value of blockchain.
