Qin Yi, founder of blockchain research of Deloitte China, recently speaks about the blockchain development in insurance industry.



Qin Yi, founder of blockchain research of Deloitte China

Three years ago, more than 600 members of Deloitte across the world began to study the blockchain technology. And now, we have entered a production stage covering product research, establishment of ecosystem and applications in different scenarios.

From the perspective of customer satisfaction, insurance company must possess a strong data analysis capability to predict the needs of customers in advance. Next step is to develop products immediately to meet customer needs.

Big global insurance companies usually take three measures to maintain the sensitivity to new industry intruders and new technology. First, the insurance company set up an innovation center, incubating new technology for customer experience. Secondly, insurance company partners with different institutions and different ecosystems to explore new frontier. Thirdly, insurance company cut into new technology by means of equity investment.

At present, development of insurance company has been driven by technology. The industry could satisfy customer’s expectation on providing transitional products and services in a faster and more effective way. Meanwhile, the risk pricing of property insurance and consumption patterns are being reshaped.

Blockchain technology can be applied to strengthen financial regulation and improve network security. Block chain is a technique that allows people to reach a consensus through a shared ledger or log without trust. This shared record or log is distributed across the entire network and verified by all parties, thereby eliminating the need for third party authorization.

The blockchain technology has been advancing rapidly on a global scale. More than 90 central banks around the world are now studying blockchain. However, we shall notice that the most difficult situation for blockchain development is to apply it in real-life scenario so that efficiency could be raised.

Exponential growth has been observed in the development of insurance technology. Blockchain can be used in nine applications in the financial sector, including property and accident insurance claims processing, cross-border payments, asset reclassification, equity settlement, compliance automation, proxy voting, convertible bonds, trade financing and syndicated loan.

In terms of Deloitte’s practice, Deloitte currently has deployed blockchain solution in financial services, life sciences, consumer and industrial products. Deloitte’s approach is to conduct proof-of-concept verification from simple user cases to find simple, flexible, efficient and low-risk solutions. Deloitte also assess the POC potential and identify critical focus, define business issues and goals, design architecture required for solution and create program prototype. Solution prototype will be test for final release.

In fact, it is very easy for us to see the disruptive technology that emerged in two or three years but it is difficult to see the changes that will occur throughout the industry in 10 years. From the track record of Deloitte, the focus is the competition between traditional financial institutions to obtain customers through the internal innovation and innovative institutions.