Japan’s SBI Holdings has multiple subsidiaries in the small-amount short-term insurance (SSI) sector. One of them, SBI Nihon SSI has created a blockchain project to manage insurance intermediary or agent data. SSI includes home contents insurance, tenant insurance, motorbike or bicycle insurance, amongst others.
The idea behind the blockchain project is to create a shared industry tool. Currently, each of the 108 SSI companies in Japan has their own systems for managing intermediaries or what they refer to in Japan as solicitors (as in soliciting business). Part of the hassle is that procedures require the SSI insurance companies to register any solicitors or agents they work with at the local Finance Bureau.
In some ways, this is not dissimilar to health insurance companies in the U.S. that have used blockchain as part of the Synaptic Health Alliance to keep track of the health professionals that work with medical providers such as clinics and hospitals.
SBI Holdings also has a habit of encouraging group companies to work with each other. It is a shareholder in R3 and has a joint venture subsidiary SBI R3 Japan. However, in this case, the solution will use R3’s Corda, but the implementation will be done by development firm ConsensusBase which works with all the major blockchain technologies.
The solution called STATICE will also be used by SBI’s other three short term insurance firms, SBI IKIIKI SSI, SBI Resta SSI and SBI PRISM SSI.
