Tradable insurance on the blockchain. Why we should think about it. Part — 1 of 2. fidentiaX Follow Oct 17, 2017 · 3 min read

So, I began writing this after our introduction to the community. We really appreciate the support from the media and the people that have voiced their support and their opinions on fidentiaX. I spoke to Alvin (co-founder) and it seems as if we were jogging down memory lane to when it all began and why we even wanted to do this in the first place. Which leads me to pen down our journey in breaking our backs, on fidentiaX.

How it all began……

We started getting our feet wet into blockchain when we were looking at companies to acquire for the private fund that we worked for. The journey began as in with most individuals that first hear about the technology. From being early sceptics, to crypto holders, to ingesting whatever the media could feed us (Don Tapscott’s TED talk probably explains it best for me in the early days), to meeting unsavoury self-proclaim blockchain gurus to wizards in the community like Roberto Capodieci. Long story short, we ended up buying an Insurtech start-up instead of a blockchain consultancy company! This will be a story for another day.

What came out of the entire experience was 3 core beliefs that we believe in:

(1) Blockchain and its mass adoption will come. It’s a function of when.

(2) The insurance industry is prime for disruption in its current state.

(3) Managing change is a mix of art and science, especially in an antiquated sector such as Insurance

The used case for blockchain is definitely there. With the plethora of articles done from McKinsey & Co, HBR, PWC and industry publishers like the Digital Insurer, we can safely ascertain that there is definitely headwind towards this space. If you peer into the blockchain community, there is an equal amount of enthusiasm and creativeness to conjure up solutions that are on the tip of breaking edge.

On a consortium level, the large insurers are banding together to explore blockchain to create efficiencies in their processes. This is an amazing recognition that the technology has its place in the industry. However, one might still argue that what is proliferated on a consortium level amongst oligopolies may create mass adoption, but true economic benefit might still be retained by the incumbent stakeholders and its agencies. Hence the reliance of political will of the state, to re-distribute value across the common value chain might be a question of how much, how fair and when.

There is a community movement to redefine how insurance on blockchain should be in its utopian state. If your reading this article you probably have gone through a ton of other commonly motivated believers of the technology that is chipping away at the multiple used cases for blockchain. Probably one of my favourites, will be the article publish by Consensys (linked below).

Insurance on the Blockchain

media.consensys.net

So if we were to put down a distinct purpose on what we want to achieve through fidentiaX, that catchphrase has to be — adoption.

Our interpretation of adoption…..

The best way to describe how we felt about adoption can be best summarised by the opening para written by Simon Phipps of the Digital insurer when he was a panel speaker at an insurance CIO event.

“I was asked what CIOs could do to accelerate adoption — under a show of hands only a handful in the room had so far bought any form of crypto — probably around 5% of the room. Putting a few bucks into a couple of coins or tokens, not necessarily with a view to making money, but more as a way of learning about the process, the market dynamics and the range of players driving blockchain innovation, is a great way of getting involved and ‘feeling the love (and the pain!)’, with a bit of skin in the game. After all, internal stakeholders and external customers are going to expect CIOs and other tech leaders to have a view, right?”

So in the pursuit of delivering a strong purpose for the adoption of insurance on the blockchain, we decided to focus on building a blockchain solution to allow the masses to “feel the love and the pain”.

stay tuned for the continuation in part 2 of 2. Before you go…. please check out our website at www.fidentiax.com