The world’s first blockchain powered platform for marine insurance, which has been trialled and adopted by Maersk, has been launched for commercial use.
Insurwave, developed in a joint venture between Ernst and Young (EY) and Guardtime, utilizes blockchain and distributed ledger technologies powered by Microsoft Azure and ACORD data standards, a global standards setting body for the insurance market, to help business transform the risk management process.
Within its first year of operation, Insurwave is set to support more than half a million automated ledger transactions, managing risk for more than 1,000 commercial vessels.
The platform connects all participants in a secure, private network with accurate and fixed and irrefutable audit trail — establishing a first of its kind digital insurance value chain.
A.P Møller-Maesrk participated in the development of the platform, running the system as a pilot client on their marine hull portfolio.
Read the “Smartlog: Piloting Blockchain for Logistics” technical paper from Kouvola Innovation for a discussion on how the ledger technology will impact the supply chain
A.P. Møller-Maersk A/S Head of Risk and Insurance, Lars Henneberg, said: “Our ambition is to drive the digital transformation of the transport and logistics industry and we see this platform as a testament to the value that can be extracted from streamlining areas of our industry that still rely on manual and often complex procedures.
“Operating around 350 owned container vessels across the world, marine insurance takes up considerable resources for us.
“Moving it to this platform is helping us automate manual processes and alleviate a range of inefficiencies and frictional costs in the way we have used to trade marine insurance.”
The first phase of the Insurwave rollout is solely focused on marine insurance, however EY, Guardtime and Microsoft have plans to roll it out to other types of business in the future — including marine cargo, global logistics, aviation and the energy sectors.
Global Insurance Leader at EY, Shaun Crawford, commented: “It is a proud moment for a number of heavy weight industry participants to be live with a genuine end-to-end blockchain platform in the specialty insurance market.
“All parties have worked extraordinarily hard, as a closely knit team, to get to this exciting milestone.
“To move from proof of concept just a year ago to a fully functioning platform that is delivering immediate value to clients feels exceptional.”