Yesterday The Institutes RiskStream Collaborative announced the formation of a blockchain innovation lab. The insurance consortium has more than 40 property and casualty members as well as a group dedicated to life and annuities.
The new company, RiskStream Labs Inc, is focused on early-stage ideas to develop Proofs of Concepts (PoC). Longer-term some of these will become fully-fledged RiskStream projects. It also aims to engage both members as well as insurance clients – the risk departments of companies outside of insurance. The company will be run by RiskStream leaders Christopher McDaniel and Patrick Schmid.
“We’re excited to work with some of the smartest minds in our profession and provide a central point to collectively collaborate and advance the industry,” said Christopher McDaniel, RiskStream president.
In terms of applications, RiskStream mentioned the potential to explore IoT and analytics, as well as surety and workers compensation.
It’s a busy time for RiskStream. The consortium is getting ready to roll out its Canopy blockchain platform’s initial use case, First Notice of Loss for auto accidents as well as Proof of Insurance. After a round of production testing late last year, several insurers are now expected to start running the solution in parallel to their existing systems. The Canopy platform leverages R3’s Corda.
Additionally, the 2020 product focus is commercial Certificates of Insurance and Placement for Reinsurance. Plus there are two life and annuity use cases moving forward, one of which is at a very early stage.
Update: the text was corrected to change the current priorities.
