EY Launch Blockchain Insurance for the Shipping Industry with Maersk Onboard
In a major development and after several months of piloting with leading companies, Ernst & Young launch blockchain insurance for the global shipping industry, which has gone live with Maersk for commercial use today.
Entitled Insurwave, it utilises Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and is built on top of R3‘s open-source Corda. Using distributed ledger technology, the platform allows all relevant parties access to each shipment record, and automates insurance transactions.
Ernst & Young (EY), one of the largest professional services firms in the world and one of the “Big Four” accounting firms, developed the blockchain insurance platform with the world’s largest blockchain software company Guardtime.
The pilot phase, involving insurers MS Amlin and XL Catlin, was deployed together with the world’s largest overseas cargo and freight carrier AP Moller-Maersk, that joined the group in September 2017. Lars Henneberg, Head of Risk and Insurance at Maersk said.
“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”
The group expects Insurwave to execute over half a million automated blockchain transactions in its first year of commercial use, helping to manage risk for more than 1,000 vessels.
Todays launch, marks the first step for blockchain technology to transform the insurance ecosystem. In a statement about extending the platform for other types of business, EY’s Global Insurance Leader, Shaun Crawford said:
“EY, Guardtime and Microsoft plan to roll it out to other types of business insurance for the marine cargo, global logistics, aviation and energy sectors”
Denmark-based Maersk, has been ambitiously piloting a variety of blockchain projects, with the aim of massively improving the entire global trade process. It is also working with IBM Hyperledger on a blockchain platform to record and transact cargo information for the global shipping supply chain.
