View this article online: https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2021/01/27/598883.htm
What its creators say is the first global operational offering on blockchain infrastructure has been launched, enabling the transfer of facultative risks within a network of companies, with marine insurance being the first business line to try it out.
Eurapco, a strategic alliance of eight primarily mutual European insurers, and B3i Services AG, a global industry-led initiative, announced the launch of Eurapco Unity. In December, Eurapco, together with its partners Achmea, La Mobilière, Reale Group and B3i, delivered the first version of Eurapco Unity.
The Eurapco Board and its chairman, Luca Filippone, had asked the general manager of Eurapco, Wilma de Bruijn, to identify an opportunity for blockchain within the alliance. De Bruijn’s first decision was to create a workstream with a specific goal: identify business cases across Eurapco partners where blockchain offers improvements..
Following market and technological research, Eurapco selected marine insurance and reinsurance as areas where blockchain can bring concrete benefits by increasing transparency and security, while significantly reducing administrative effort.
“A new world of digitalization has opened up for us. Documents are quickly accessed and via a chat message the transaction is transmitted to all partners. All data remains in the blockchain and cannot be altered,” said Dieter Lammertz, head of Marine and Fine Art, la Mobilière.
Lammertz is confident Unity will deliver considerable time savings and expects to move all accounts and claims handling to the system, saving additional time and resources.
Antonio di Marzo, head of Products at B3i, said the Unity project is just one example of a common use case for distributed ledger technology (DLT) that underpins blockchain, and he believes this implementation is a “great showcase” for other risk pools. Eurapco acts as a framework enabler, establishing the rules and protocols to be followed by members to cooperate and share risks in full compliance.
“With DLT removing the need for unnecessary administration, users can focus on adding value,” added di Marzo.
John Carolin, B3i CEO commented, said Unity is the first bespoke application built on B3i’s Fluidity platform. “We are pleased to see that this has significantly reduced application development time, cost and complexity, enabling us to deliver the same for further B3i partners and third-party application developers. We look forward to further expanding Unity’s functionality and scaling the business benefits this solution brings,” he said.
B3i was founded in October 2016 as an insurance industry consortium, which then formed B3i Services AG as an independent company. B3i shareholders include Achmea, Aegon, Africa Re, Ageas, Allianz, AXA, China Pacific Insurance, Deutsche Rück, Generali, Hannover Re, IRB Brasil Re, Liberty Mutual, Mapfre Re, Munich Re, SBI Group, SCOR, Swiss Re, Tokio Marine, Türk Reasürans, VIG Re, and Zurich Insurance Group.