Marsh Pilots Blockchain-Powered Insurance Placement and Binding Process

Insurance broker Marsh is piloting a digital insurance placement platform that it says has the potential to let clients, carriers and its brokers share real time information and feedback on the placement and binding process.

The platform, called Risk Exchange, is run with blockchain technology. The Risk Exchange concept was proposed by a winning Marsh hackathon team and further developed in Marsh Digital Labs.

In the pilot, Marsh clients chemical firm Dow Inc. and appliance maker SharkNinja will bind U.S. trade credit policies with carriers including AIG and Euler Hermes, receiving real time status updates and notifications throughout the process.

“This is an important milestone in Marsh’s digital transformation and a great example of applying emerging tech to create value for our clients,” said Sastry Durvasula, chief digital officer for Marsh. He said clients can experience not only a “more organized, digitized placement process on the blockchain platform but also one with greater transparency, security and collaboration among all parties involved.”

Nick Robson, Global Credit Specialties leader for Marsh JLT Specialty, said digital platforms powered by blockchain are ideally suited for organizations that either generate or finance large amounts of account receivables. “By digitizing the invoices, payments, and other trade and insurance documents of the parties involved, we can streamline the trade credit insurance placement process, drive efficiencies and improve the overall buying experience,” Robson claimed.

Risk Exchange is one of several Marsh initiatives utilizing blockchain.

In April, Marsh rolled out a proof of insurance blockchain platform to U.S. commercial clients. This automates and streamlines the manual process, allowing clients to speed up necessary business functions while increasing coverage certainty. Clients can search, view, issue and re-issue their certificates of insurance on-demand 24 hours a day. Marsh has since expanded this offering to make it available through the Salesforce customer management platform.

Last October, the broker announced that it had begun developing the first blockchain-based verification product for clients in the sharing and gig economies. Working in collaboration with the data security platform Evident, the blockchain product aims to streamline the onboarding of gig economy workers.