Maersk-Backed Blockchain Platform for Marine Insurance Launched

A new marine insurance blockchain platform backed by Maersk Group has been launched today to support marine hull insurance.

Named Insurwave, the platform has been built by a joint venture between EY and Guardtime and leverages blockchain and distributed ledger technologies Microsoft Azure infrastructure and ACORD data standards.

The platform is planned to support more than half a million automated ledger transactions and help manage risk for more than 1,000 commercial vessels in the first year.

“By connecting participants in a secure, private network with an accurate, immutable audit trail and services to execute processes, the platform establishes a first of its kind digital insurance value chain,” a press statement from the platform developers reads.

Industry leader A.P. Møller-Maersk is supporting the development of the blockchain technology as a pilot client and is continuing on the platform with its marine hull portfolio. Insurance industry leaders Willis Towers Watson, XL Catlin are also taking part in the project.

“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,” Lars Henneberg, A.P. Møller-Maersk A/S Head of Risk and Insurance, said.

The project moved from a concept a year ago to a fully functioning platform. However, the developers plan to expand the portfolio of the platform to other transport sectors.

“The first phase of Insurwave rollout is focused on marine insurance, and 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,” Shaun Crawford, EY Global Insurance Leader, said.

According to insurance industry majors blockchain is set to disrupt the insurance industry.

“With this blockchain, we are bringing together — for the first time — all the parties of the insurance value chain on a single platform. Ultimately, through the use of IoT and smart contracts, policies will be updated automatically to reflect the risks covered; and this combination of technologies will help improve efficiency in claims assessment and payment. Those are tangible wins for our clients, no matter their industry. And with the platform going live, we are now ready to start working on opening it up to other insurance segments,” Martin Henley, Chief Information Officer, XL Catlin, says.