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Ep.51 – Blockchain delivering inclusive insurance to Sri Lanka by Etherisc & AON
For this week’s episode, we spoke to Kshitij Nangia, Director – COO Strategy at Aon, and Michiel Berende, Inclusive Insurance Lead at Etherisc. Our guests provide us with an introduction to the notion of inclusive insurance along with insights as to how blockchain can help increase insurance penetration in emerging markets such as Sri Lanka.
Etherisc has teamed up with Aon and Oxfam in Sri Lanka to offer small hold farmers weather-based crop insurance.
About our guests
Michiel started out as an underwriter at Interpolis, a Dutch insurance company. He moved on to work closely with the DHAN foundation to explore micro-finance and microinsurance solutions within India. As with most blockchain enthusiasts, he discovered Bitcoin in 2013 and was intrigued by how Bitcoin could facilitate small transaction values at a relatively low cost.
Kshitij has a background in strategy consulting. Prior to joining Aon in 2014, he worked in India and Chile as a strategy consultant in financial services. He is currently part of the COO strategy team at Aon.
About Etherisc and Aon
Etherisc is an InsurTech firm that focusses on blockchain applications within the insurance industry. The firm aims to offer “Insurance as a service” by becoming the Linux for insurance. The first phase of this goal went live recently through the launch of the General Insurance Framework (GIF) – an open-source codebase for Ethereum based insurance applications (dApps), which may be accessed via GitHub here.
Aon is a diversified professional services firm which provides risk, retirement and health consulting. Aon is one of the “Top 3” insurance brokers.
What is blockchain and how does it work?
According to Kshitij, blockchain is digital ledger shared across parties. It has in-built audit trail that provides an immutable record which induces trust between parties. He believes the real power of blockchain can be harnessed when combined with AI and smart contracts.
Michiel adds on that blockchain permits P2P transfer of digital assets without any intermediary. The decentralized network is held together by nodes who process transactions in return for some incentive.
Inclusive insurance
According to Michiel, inclusive insurance (or microinsurance) refers to any insurance product offered to low income clients. Roughly 1.6 billion people do not have access to microinsurance products. He provides some alarming statistics – insurance coverage ratios for some regions are rather low - Latin America stands at 8.5%, Africa at 5.4% and Asia – 6.9%.
Michiel estimates that there are 500 million small hold farmers globally without access to any insurance and index-based agriculture insurance, which is a good fit for blockchain, may be a solution to increase insurance penetration.
Project origins and background
Oxfam has been working on-ground in Sri Lanka with local insurer SANASA Insurance Co providing farmers with crop insurance. In March 2018, Michiel attended a conference where he spoke about agricultural insurance using blockchain and the impact that blockchain can have on the insu...
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By Walid Al Saqqaf - Blockchain insuranceFor this week’s episode, we spoke to Kshitij Nangia, Director – COO Strategy at Aon, and Michiel Berende, Inclusive Insurance Lead at Etherisc. Our guests provide us with an introduction to the notion of inclusive insurance along with insights as to how blockchain can help increase insurance penetration in emerging markets such as Sri Lanka.
Etherisc has teamed up with Aon and Oxfam in Sri Lanka to offer small hold farmers weather-based crop insurance.
About our guests
Michiel started out as an underwriter at Interpolis, a Dutch insurance company. He moved on to work closely with the DHAN foundation to explore micro-finance and microinsurance solutions within India. As with most blockchain enthusiasts, he discovered Bitcoin in 2013 and was intrigued by how Bitcoin could facilitate small transaction values at a relatively low cost.
Kshitij has a background in strategy consulting. Prior to joining Aon in 2014, he worked in India and Chile as a strategy consultant in financial services. He is currently part of the COO strategy team at Aon.
About Etherisc and Aon
Etherisc is an InsurTech firm that focusses on blockchain applications within the insurance industry. The firm aims to offer “Insurance as a service” by becoming the Linux for insurance. The first phase of this goal went live recently through the launch of the General Insurance Framework (GIF) – an open-source codebase for Ethereum based insurance applications (dApps), which may be accessed via GitHub here.
Aon is a diversified professional services firm which provides risk, retirement and health consulting. Aon is one of the “Top 3” insurance brokers.
What is blockchain and how does it work?
According to Kshitij, blockchain is digital ledger shared across parties. It has in-built audit trail that provides an immutable record which induces trust between parties. He believes the real power of blockchain can be harnessed when combined with AI and smart contracts.
Michiel adds on that blockchain permits P2P transfer of digital assets without any intermediary. The decentralized network is held together by nodes who process transactions in return for some incentive.
Inclusive insurance
According to Michiel, inclusive insurance (or microinsurance) refers to any insurance product offered to low income clients. Roughly 1.6 billion people do not have access to microinsurance products. He provides some alarming statistics – insurance coverage ratios for some regions are rather low - Latin America stands at 8.5%, Africa at 5.4% and Asia – 6.9%.
Michiel estimates that there are 500 million small hold farmers globally without access to any insurance and index-based agriculture insurance, which is a good fit for blockchain, may be a solution to increase insurance penetration.
Project origins and background
Oxfam has been working on-ground in Sri Lanka with local insurer SANASA Insurance Co providing farmers with crop insurance. In March 2018, Michiel attended a conference where he spoke about agricultural insurance using blockchain and the impact that blockchain can have on the insu...