Enterprise Giants Accenture and EY Join Insurance Blockchain Consortium RiskBlock

Insurance blockchain consortium RiskBlock appears to be getting set to launch a number of major trials, with it’s recent announcements on bringing enterprise giants Accenture and Ernst & Young (EY) on-board.

The RiskBlock Alliance was launched in July of 2017 by The Institute, the world’s leading not-for-profit provider of education and research for risk management and insurance.

To date, it has brought 30 global insurers, reinsurers and brokers together as members of the consortium, with the aim of utilising blockchain technology to streamline processes, reducing industry and consumer costs, whilst improving safety and helping to prevent fraud.

The announcement of Accenture being appointed as Lead Framework Architect, for the build of RiskBlock’s production grade platform, came on the same day that it announced it was switching from Ethereum to R3‘s Corda blockchain.

Director of The Institutes RiskBlock Alliance Christopher McDaniel, attributed the switch to the fact that R3 was “built from the ground up as enterprise focused”, he added that:

“strong emphasis on the insurance industry made the Corda platform the best foundational solution for RiskBlock.” adding that they “will work closely with Corda to ensure the ability to cross-communicate between platforms”

Accenture will build and develop the platform, helping to test and implement the use cases, of which RiskBlock has identified 40 within the insurance industry.  Global insurance practice leader at Accenture, Michael Costonis stated:

“RiskBlock has built a powerful alliance, and we’re eager to work with them to develop scalable blockchain use cases in insurance,”

Further to this partnership, RiskBlock announced on Monday that U.S.-based consultancy firm EY will provide blockchain-specific cyber security and risk management guidance for the project.  RiskBlock’s McDaniel stated:

“services EY is developing will not just be critical to the success of the RiskBlock Alliance, but likely will help set the standard for industry-leading practices for blockchain enterprise,”

Working with the RiskBlock Alliance, EY will lead practice controls, and be tasked to identify risks unique to its blockchain, as well as to provide blockchain-specific cyber security assessments and testing.

EY Global insurance leader, David Hollander, said that EY are “proud to be pioneers together and teaming to address industry issues.”, citing The Institutes as long-standing leader of knowledge within the insurance industry, he said:

“It makes sense that they are leveraging that strength of reputation and stability to help steer the industry into a new, uncertain and yet exciting future as an industry,”

Membership of the insurance blockchain consortium has begun to grow exponentially, signing 12 new firms just last week.  Other enterprise partners include Deloitte, IBM and Cap Gemini.

According to an announcement published on The Institutes website, RiskBlock looks to test numerous use cases by the end of 2018.

As per a previous BCTech Report, EY already has it’s own platform providing blockchain insurance for the shipping industry.  Indeed, Marsh and IBM launched a commercial ‘proof of insurance’ solution, and just last week, IBM and the American Association of Insurance Services announced a blockchain insurance data platform called ‘openIDL’.