A collaborative partnership consisting of Deloitte, FWD, blockchain platform Zilliqa, and online broker Insurance Market has launched Inmediate, a Singapore-based collaborative eco system for blockchain based re/insurance.

The project was conceptualised by Insurance Market, a broker from Singapore that already has established online re/insurance distribution and blockchain expertise.

Otbert de Jong, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Insurance Market, said: “The blockchain and its smart contract functionality will have a huge impact on the industry. What is needed now is a platform for all the disparate initiatives to come together on and a shared infrastructure to develop knowledge, speed, controls and commercial viability”.

The project is currently in the pilot phase, and is set to be joined by 4 more re/insurance groups by the first quarter of 2019.

Eventually, the Inmediate network will be made accessible to all re/insurance companies and distributors from Singapore, Asia, and the wider global market.

Raj Juta, Insurance Leader of Deloitte, added that the nature of blockchain requires both internal and external industry collaboration, and that re/insurers need to work together and rely on help from outside the industry to drive development.

Blockchain is expected to bring many benefits to the re/insurance industry, including cheaper insurance, greater variety of products, faster transactions, and wider accessibility.

Max Kantelia, co-founder of Zilliqa, commented: “It gives us great pleasure to be supporting Inmediate which will be building its game-changing multi-suite insurance product on Zilliqa.

“We are proud to be supporting meaningful applications which are able to take advantage of our scalable infrastructure, which has been tested to have a throughput of almost 2,500 transactions per second. This will be critical as an engine to power Inmediate’s growth in this space and bring the powers of decentralisation to the insurance sector”.

Additionally, Abhishek Bhatia, Group Chief Officer, New Business Models at FWD, said: “FWD is excited to be working with Insurance Market and Deloitte to investigate practical insurance applications of Blockchain technology.

“We believe that blockchain will play a powerful role in the future of insurance, helping forward thinking insurers to improve operational performance, and more importantly, provide greater transparency and efficiency to customers.”