Indian insurance consortium develops first blockchain application - Ledger Insights

In August last year, thirteen Indian Life insurers banded together to create a blockchain consortium. Today they announced the first solution to facilitate cross-company data sharing. The plan is to reduce data breach risks, fraud, and money laundering. They also anticipate improved customer experiences and turnaround times as a result of better efficiency and improved record keeping.

Last year talking to India’s Business Standard, Pankaj Pandey, CIO at IDBI Federal Life commented: “Considering that it’s a very small group of insurance companies here in India. It will be a challenge if more than one standard for blockchain exists. We hope other companies will also join us gradually.”

Today, V Viswanand, COO of Max Life said “The shared infrastructure provided by the distributed ledger, smart contracts and non-repudiation capabilities of blockchain can dramatically enhance the insurance value chain, and pave the way to greater automation in requesting, exchanging and entering data. ”

The original plan was for EY to manage partnerships with multiple technology partners with the intent to try Hyperledger, MultiChain, and Corda. Today’s announcement was the first of several initiatives.

This particular solution was developed late last year in conjunction with Cognizant. The technology used is Corda and hosted on Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure.

The August announcement highlighted the intention of integrating with medical centers and banks. Today’s statement says it will reduce reliance on intermediaries and aggregators for KYC, financial and medical underwriting, risk assessment, fraud detection, and regulatory compliance.

The thirteen insurers are: