This Startup Is Transforming​ Insurance Sector With Blockchain Technology

B3i, or the Blockchain Insurance Industry Initiative, is a blockchain trading platform for the insurance and reinsurance industries. 

The Blockchain Insurance Industry Initiative (B3i) is a collaboration of insurers and reinsurers formed to explore the potential of using Distributed Ledger Technologies for the benefit of all stakeholders in the value chain. 

The organisation was incepted in 2016 and is currently formed of 15 members from across the globe. It is focused solely on developing and testing technical developments aimed at better serving customers and enhancing transaction efficiency, thus promoting competition. 

B3i was incorporated in Zurich on 23rd March 2018 and it is 100% owned by 18 insurance market participants around the world.  Altogether, more than 40 companies are involved in B3i as shareholders, customers, and community members. 

Recently, John Carolin had been appointed Chief Executive Officer of B3i Services AG who had previously served as interim CEO since March 2019 after joining B3i as Chief Financial Officer in March 2018.

John has a broad range of experience in the industry including in insurance and reinsurance, as well as technology and entrepreneurship. He even has profound experience of working in different countries like South Africa, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

He has founded, led, or grown ventures that include a carbon offset platform, a retail property asset manager and a B2B advertising marketplace.  

 John is determined to lead B3i as it matures into a customer-centric software development company that serves the global insurance industry, its brokers, and its customers.

“B3i will enable material time and cost savings that can only be achieved by working together as an industry rather than alone. B3i has the extraordinary advantage of being entirely owned by 17 of its customers and having already built a community of more than 40 insurers, reinsurers, brokers, and related companies.”

He continued: “I look forward to leading the B3i team as we execute on a bold vision to enable better insurance through frictionless risk transfer.”

 They dream of better insurance enabled by frictionless risk transfer. Thus they aim to transform the insurance market by delivering better solutions for end consumers through faster access to insurance with less administrative cost. 

B3i is creating a better insurance industry by developing standards, protocols and network infrastructure to remove friction in risk transfer.  B3i’s shareholders and participants believe that new technologies can give end consumers of insurance better and faster access to insurance.

By acting together, they make sure to optimize and automate market-wide processes, generate significant savings in time and cost that cannot be achieved by insurers or intermediaries acting alone.  

The B3i team has created software applications for their clients which provide them with a variety of solutions accessible through their network. Their vision is to see a variety of applications for their clients to use which will help to reduce friction across the value chain and also improve the quality of data which the market is so reliant on. 

They use Blockchain as their tool to achieve their goals. This not only offers efficiencies in existing business processes but will catalyse the development of new and innovative business models. 

They have been continuously reviewing new technologies which can help to deliver them their vision especially where they can combine to create very powerful outcomes in our network. 

We all know how data is at the centre of the insurance industry, but legacy products, processes, and technologies degrade data becoming an administrative burden, while being unable to cope with the exponentially growing complexity and volume of data.

Thus they use a platform built on Distributed Ledger Technology which can eliminate the duplication of data across applications, systems, and parties. DLT provides a “single source of truth”, thus removing the need for traditional data transformation or integrations.

DLT guarantees that counterparties see an indisputable single view of shared data which obviates wasteful and error prone processes such as reconciliations. Shared applications that address common industry problems will provide a platform for individual participants to execute their digital transformation strategies.

Thus using Blockchain technology which has been shaping the future of how the world functions, digitalizing the insurance market is a definite win.