Blockchain can help meet insurance sector’s challenges, say EY

The insurance industry must keep a close eye on the transformative potential of technology, according to Ian Meadows, director for insurance at EY and a director of EY’s initiative Insurwave, which offers blockchain-enabled marine insurance.

Meadows told Monte Carlo Today that Insurwave began trialling blockchain and other disruptive technologies, such as cloud and artificial intelligence, four years ago. According to Meadows, technology can help the industry grow and cut costs.

“The industry talks a lot about the need to manage acquisition costs, expense ratios and improvements to loss prevention,” he said.

“In all these scenarios there is little emphasis on how to improve the service proposition as a way of driving efficiencies and costs. We’re wrestling with finding answers to our clients’ problems, especially where industry initiatives don’t have the agility or mandate to solve them.”

Meadows added that a change is occurring in how clients are embedding data and technology in their value chains and, as a result, are finding new ways of packaging data and buying and selling risk.

“At the start of the Insurwave story, it was a trial to validate a number of use cases for marine,” Meadows said.

“Given the need for brokers and insurers to connect to their clients and to deliver service quality, automation and richness of data, we have invested to put the platform into production.

“Insurwave has been a direct response to the industry’s challenge to drive connectivity between customers, their brokers and straight into the offices of the insurers,” he concluded.