Blocksure’s chief executive on winning Excellence in Technology Service Provider

What does it mean to Blocksure to win a bronze award for Excellence in Technology - Service Provider?

Winning the bronze award is a proud moment for the whole Blocksure team and all the people who have supported us in getting here. A lot of hard work has taken place behind the scenes to understand how we can truly help the insurance industry – from external partners/advisers providing input alongside our internal expertise on the design of the platform, to our developers converting this into an excellent product by deploying some very clever code.

We have been recognised by the insurtech world a few times but this gives me the most satisfaction as it is an insurance industry award from the Insurance Times. It was voted on by people who work in our industry and provides excellent validation of what we have built from the most important category of people, our potential customers. The award also provides great coverage which massively increasing awareness of what we are doing. 

 Why did Blocksure choose to tackle back office costs and why was blockchain selected to help do this?

Back-office costs are the hidden industry problem. It is easier to sell the ‘sexy’ front ends. There are excellent solutions out there for this - few are taking on the challenge of the back-office. It is a harder nut to crack both in terms of the technology and also selling the solution to insurers, brokers and MGAs.

What makes this possible now, and of greatest significance, are the unique features of blockchain technology.

This allows the creation of solutions not previously available to the intermediated sector. The broker market now has a technology capability that provides major cost benefits, even compared to direct writers, and focuses on the people interactions of broking.

It is all about putting the end consumer in a better position for example a panel of insurers; better security of data and most importantly the trust, servicing and advice provided by the broker.

 Do you have any case studies that have applied Insure Now to reduce back office costs successfully?

Insure Now is one of our case studies. The broker Commercial and General provided evidence that they were able to save close to 90% of back-office costs. This is a significant saving but it is important not to miss out on other key benefits provided by ‘blockchain’ technology. Immutability of data which is permissioned and instantly shared alongside documents distributed to all parties in seconds; security of ‘blockchain’ transactions; connecting multiple parties.

The current Microinsurance project highlights potential savings in the most extreme scenario. Premiums proposed range from $2 to $10. Blocksure OS makes these products viable by providing the really efficient processing and reducing transaction to a very low level across a long supply chain

How easily can this be adopted for insurance businesses that have legacy systems in place?

The simple answer is Very! There are a number of options available to the various parties involved in the relationship, from replacing their entire system to connecting with Blocksure OS APIs. Let’s talk about data outputs and data inputs. Data in Blocksure OS can be exported into legacy systems via our flexible APIs which can be adapted to any customer.

Alternatively, on the topic of data inputs, if an insurance business has an existing front-end (for policyholders or staff) that they don’t wish to replace, then the data that gets input into that front-end can be sent to our API; that leads to the data being processed and stored in Blocksure OS. Of course, there is the also option to replace their front-ends with the modern, mobile-friendly front-ends provided by Blocksure.

 What is on the cards for Blocksure in 2020?

2020 is a big year for Blocksure. We want to help the broking sector take a major step forward in how they operate and deliver an improved service to their customers, old and new. We are currently talking to organisations in the UK, Brazil, The Netherlands, Japan and Indonesia. Implementations include schemes, microinsurance and on-demand.

System replacements for schemes are across a range of products from property owners, household contents, excess of loss and quota share reinsurance.

The microinsurance project is important and will actually help people in third world countries to change their lives. For a small premium (US$2 – US$10) they can obtain cover allowing them to transform how they live e.g. insurance protection when taking out a loan, only possible with insurance and, setting up a small business in turn getting them out of the poverty trap.

Bringing positive challenges developing the product and focused revenue generation.