Insureblocks

Mance Harmon, CEO of Hedera Hashgraph has returned to Insureblocks to discuss the exciting news of Google joining the Hedera Hashgraph Governing Council. We also discussed the addition of Hedera’s new service entitled, Hedera Consensus Service, which brings interesting opportunities for enterprise blockchain platforms such as Hyperledger and Corda to embrace the opportunity to create verifiable timestamps and ordering of events to a public level trust.

 

What is blockchain and what is hashgraph?

Blockchain as a term refers to two things:

* A data structure which is a chain of blocks of transactions

* A consensus algorithm that enables a community of participants, each of which holds a local copy of that chain of blocks to come to an agreement or consensus on which block to put next on the top of that chain in order for everyone to keep a consistent chain of blocks

Unfortunately such a blockchain is designed to be slow for a number of reasons:

* Proof of work, the use of a really hard cryptographic puzzle, to reach consensus is time consuming

* From an architectural standpoint, having a single chain that everyone uses is also limiting

Hashgraph, similarly is a term that refers to both a data structure and a consensus algorithm. Hashgraph’s data structure is a graph, in a mathematical sense, whose nodes or vertices are linked together with hashes cryptographically.

Its consensus algorithm makes it possible for those that have a copy of the hashgraph to calculate how the other nodes in the network would vote in order to come to an agreement on the order of transactions.

Because it’s a graph rather than a chain, all of the transactions are flowing into the network, can be processed simultaneously without the need for proof of work.

Hashgraph thus removes the two constraining factors of blockchain: no need for proof of work and a graph instead of a single chain. The result is much higher performance and higher level of security due hashgraph using asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerance.

 

 

What is Hedera Hashgraph?

 

 

Google joins Hedera’s Governing Council

The Council was designed to provide a governing body that the market would trust in doing a good job in terms of shepherding this global network to full maturity and beyond. The Council makes decisions on a wide range of topics such as product roadmap and in control of treasury management.  Council members can serve up to two or three year terms. The Council will ultimately be composed of 39 members to represent the full range of use cases across industries, geographies and through time. The council members are chosen to be the largest and most respected members in their categories and geographies. Today there are 11 members: Swisscom blockchain, Tata communications, Nomura, IBM, Boeing, Google, Magalu, Deutsche Telekom, FIS, DLA Piper, and Swirlds.

On the 11th of February, Google became the 11th member of the Hedera Governing Council.

Hedera is a Delaware based LLC, which is a business vehicle with a legal existence separate and distinct from its owners. Council members are members of the LLC in the legal sense.

In this exciting podcast we get to hear about how blockchain is used to track the coronavirus. We had the pleasure of having Jim Nasr, CEO of Acoer, developers of the blockchain coronavirus tracker, talk to us about the challenges the healthcare industry faces and opportunities for innovating it.

 

What is blockchain?

Jim looks at blockchain in terms of three pillars:

* Technology

* Token economics

* Distributed computing

The first pillar is with technology of distributed ledgers themselves.

The second pillar is with regards to the value creation attribution specifically to public blockchains. This is where blockchain provides a reward in a public setting in a transparent manner for the creation of value. In the Bitcoin network for example miners are rewarded with 12.5 Bitcoins for completing a mathematical challenge for which they would have used electricity and processing power.

The third pillar is regarding distributed architecture and distributed computer. For Jim this is fundamentally a question of culture of distributing power instead of a few central figures or central servers and removing intermediaries.

 

The Coronavirus Tracker

Acoer coronavirus (COVID-19) blockchain tracker

On the 3rd of February Acoer announced the launched of its coronavirus tracker. Acoer is a software development company narrowly focused on modern, open and interoperable healthcare software.

Acoer has created a data visualization tool to track the deadly coronavirus. The tool, known as the HashLog data visualization engine, interacts in real-time with Hedera Hashgraph’s distributed ledger technology. This allows researchers, scientists and journalists to understand the spread of the coronavirus and its trends over time through visuals presented on Acoer’s HashLog dashboard.

John Hopkins coronavirus (COVID-19) tracker

 

In creating this tool Jim had looked at existing trackers, particularly the Johns Hopkins one  and felt they could add a more global perspective on it, use the existing visualisation engine called HashLog to make it their tracker more usable, dynamic and filterable.

Jim has been a huge believer that when it comes to public health data surveillance, blockchain can be a source of truth and a source of accountability. If you tuned the token economics and the game theory correctly, you can incentivize good data collection and you can disincentivize bad players from gaming the system.

Acoer are constantly growing their data sources. Today they have clinical data from the CDC  and other sources that show relevant clinical trials that are happening for treating coronavirus. Google Trends and social media provide in context data.

 

Why blockchain?

It was pointed out to Jim that as the Acoer coronavirus tracker the Johns Hopkins one is using the same data as theirs from the CDC and the WHO but it does it with APIs, Application Programming Interface, and not with a blockchain.

Jim points out that their tracker also uses APIs. APIs are the modern way for different systems that are unaware of each other to communicate wi...

This week we’re joined by the CEO of Vinturas, Jon Kuiper. Jon was the former head of Koopman Logistics Group and has years of experience as a senior executive and a CEO in the Finished Vehicle Logistics (FVL) industry. He joins us to talk about how Vinturas is using blockchain technology to revolutionise the FVL industry.

 

What is blockchain?

Jon Kuiper explains what blockchain technology means in the FVL industry. Blockchain technology or distributed ledger technology allows Vinturas to create an infrastructure which fosters collaboration between FVL companies and all other stakeholders in the ecosystem. This in depth collaboration allows for a single source of truth amongst all players in the FVL ecosystem, which in turn can bring huge benefits for all network participants.

 

The finished vehicle logistics industry

According to The Association of European Vehicle Logistics, Finished Vehicle Logistics (FVL) are the activities that take place after a new vehicle leaves the factory until the point when it reaches the customer. The FVL industry is a highly specialised sub-section of the transportation industry with dedicated storage warehouses and skilled drivers to ensure smooth delivery without damages to the high-value product.

FVL is part of the automotive logistics market which according to a study by Global Market Insights is valued at over USD 115 billion in 2018 and is estimated to grow to USD 170 billion by 2025.

 

The key 3 challenges in the finished vehicle supply chain industry

Supply chain visibility

In 2017 Supply Chain Worldwide Survey surveyed 623 supply chain professionals across 17 different countries and concluded that only 6% of firms were able to offer any type of supply chain visibility. This, more than ever presents a huge problem across supply chains which need to be addressed.

Complexity

The finished vehicle supply chain is very complex and the complexity is only increasing. Cars can be transported from the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) through potentially 4 modes of transport road, rail, maritime and river before it reaches the car dealership further increasing the complexity. FVL often spans different countries and these countries have their regulations and rules which will need to be abided to. Also, it’s not one firm which controls the whole supply chain. Products are often passed between 3 or 4 LSP’s in the supply chain before it reaches the car dealership creating multiple handover points between different logistic service providers.

 

Customer demands

Amazon certainly leads the way in producing extremely efficient supply chains having spent billions in R&D in the last 20 years perfecting their supply chain. The ‘Amazon Effect’ has meant that expectations of supply chains in many industries have risen in recent years. Now consumers expect shorter delivery times, are less tolerant of mistakes or late deliveries. Importantly customers expect to know where their product is and how long it’ll take to reach them so like Jon Kuiper says they ...

In this exciting podcast, we are joined by Bruce Pon, co-founder of Ocean Protocol, to discuss how to monetize and tokenize data. Almost 6 years ago Bruce and Trent McConaghy, previously on Insureblocks regarding “The Data Economy”, got into the blockchain space by seeing how the concept of Bitcoin could be applied into non-financial use cases like data.

 

What is blockchain?

Bruce, refers to blockchain as a general purpose technology. He states there are only about 30 to 35 general purpose technologies that have ever been discovered on Earth, by humankind. You start off with agriculture such as the domestication of plants and animals to the steam engine of the industrial revolution to electricity and railways to the last century. In this decade we’re going to see things like AI, blockchain, bioengineering infuse themselves across the entire world.

At the highest level, blockchain is one of those fancy technologies that is going to change the world over the next 30 years. At a more in-depth technical level it is a way use technology where you don't need to trust an authority.

Bruce read an interesting concept which states that it was science in the Enlightenment era which took us away from believing in authority, the Supreme kind of knowledge of authority from priests and/or kings. That Enlightenment era made us take a different methodology for understanding the world around us, which was the scientific method. Blockchain is taking us away from believing that we need a central intermediary to hold things of value for us like a bank, like a government, or any other enterprise that holds for instance our data. Blockchain allows for data to now be held in a way that there is no authority to control your own data.

Just like the internet 30 plus years ago allowed the general public to get access to information in a way that was never before possible. Blockchain is going to allow us to get access to control our own assets in a way that was never before possible.

 

Ocean Protocol

In 2013 Trent McConaghy and his wife found the idea of Bitcoin as an interesting global database that allows people to have perfect knowledge about who controls what? Along with Bruce they found that this could be applied to intellectual property with copyright. Who owns the copyright? Who owns the rights to control the distribution of music or books?

In 2014, they started a company called ascribe to do exactly that to try to put intellectual property copyrights, trademarks, all these types of things on the Bitcoin blockchain. 18 months later they realised that Bitcoin wasn’t the appropriate infrastructure for metadata for copyrights. They then created BigchainDB, a database that was built on blockchain technology to store metadata to solve the problem with ascribe. After running 50 to 100 industry proof of concepts they came to realise that who needs data with provenance? Who needs control of their data? It is either the people providing the data and/or trying to sell the data to the AI consumer. As it is AI that is actually absorbing all the data in order to feed its algorithms. The more sources of data, the better the AI algorithm. If provenance, ownership, and origin of data can be ensured then you have the potential to change the economic model for society when it comes to non-financial use cases such as intellectual property.

The City of Dublin, Ohio, USA, is a city of 50,000 residents. Under the leadership of its Chief Information Officer, Doug McCollough it has been one of the first to launch a publicly owned fibre optic networks and also a digital identity project built on the blockchain. Join us in this exciting podcast to hear how Doug is ensuring that the City of Dublin not only doesn’t get disrupted but is also at the vanguard of innovation.

Dublin is a small city, really a suburb on the northwest corner of Columbus, Ohio. Dough really loves municipalities and is into smart cities, smart mobility, blockchain and all kinds of emerging technology and how they can help public sector organisations.

 

What is blockchain?

Blockchain is a technology, infrastructure or innovation that combines existing technologies like databases, peer to peer networks, encryption, distributed computing algorithms, to form a different way of distributing compute, data storage and data security.

In its most basic form, it works by recording pieces of data into blocks that exist with a chain. The chain becomes more resilient every time new blocks are added to it. For Doug the most important thing to him is that as an infrastructure it is superior to other databases, networks, or distributed computing models. Especially for data transactions. It tracks what happened, when, where and with whom.

 

 

City of Dublin, Ohio, USA

The City of Dublin, Ohio, USA, is a small community of 50,000. In spite of it’s size the city has a Chief Information Officer, a role which is usually reserved for very large cities like Boston, New York or Los Angeles. Most cities have an IT director whose job is to keep the technology running, not necessarily to envision what’s new and what’s new.

A few years ago, under Doug’s leadership, the City of Dublin started its path towards innovation by developing one of the first publicly owned fibre optic networks, called Dublink Broadband. Since then the city has earned a reputation of being techno centric as it embraces utilising technology to advance its economic development interests.

The city has the Global Institute for the Study of the Intelligent Community. The institute was established to help share what the City of Dublin has learned about intelligent communities and smart city development, and share those lessons with other communities. They aim to be a kind of conduit and light in showing how communities can use technology to improve the lives of their citizens.

 

Cities being disrupted

Today cities around the world are facing an unprecedent amount of challenges:

* There’s a declining and degrading trust in government which extends to cities

* Cities’ residents are increasingly concerned by a dangerous data privacy environment which can have a negative impact on cities and public transactions

* Budgetary constraints along with innovation around automation and bots have led to government bodies letting go of staff which in turn disrupts the service models that service people

Another core challenge is that cities themselves run the risk of being disrupted by digital native companies.

If cities do not innovate they will be disrupted like any other business.

Google Waze and Google Maps are more often used for information on which roads to travel on instead of government.

For this week's episode, we’re once again connecting with Christopher G. McDaniel the President of The Institute RiskStream Collaborative. In this episode, Christopher gives us an insight into the concept called risk singularity. We discuss the 3 phases that he envisions will preclude the risk singularity and what it means for insurers.

 

https://youtu.be/WMqMUPkpVfM

 

What is blockchain?

Christopher defines blockchain as a mechanism where information can be shared between different parties who without this mechanism wouldn’t normally trust each other. What this gives each of these parties is a trusted mechanism. Once widespread, they’ll be no need for information to travel back and forth between different parties. Through this mechanism, everybody in the network will now have the data ubiquitously. When this data no longer needs to be transacted between different parties continually it opens up new possibilities for insurers.

 

The Institute RiskStream Collaborative

The Institute RiskStream Collaborative is a non-profit consortium. It’s a collaboration of close to 50 members, made up of some of the largest insurance carriers and reinsurers globally. The goal is to build real-world applications and use cases using emerging technology

 

Risk singularity

So what’s meant by the risk singularity? First, the term technology singularity was made prominent by Sci-Fi writer Verner Vinge who in 1993 predicted that within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence and Ray Kurzweil through his book entitled ‘The Singularity is Near’. The term refers to a hypothetical point in time where technology advances to a tipping point and past that point technological growth becomes unpredictable and irreversible. Christopher defines risk singularity means that we get to a point where data, intelligence and process transformation have become so advance that the risk management industry undergoes a dramatic and irreversible change.

 

The impact of risk singularity to insurers

Over the next 15 to 20 years Christopher believes the following

* There’ll be a shift in that the majority of data will come to the company externally as adverse to what’s happening now where the majority of data comes from internal sources such as actuarial tables.

* It'll mean that insurers aren’t the ones to own individual’s data. Christopher envisions that eventually the individual will own their data on the personal lines side of insurance companies and individual’s will choose if they share it.

* If risk singularity occurs and data comes from external sources Christopher foresees more of a blurring of insurance business lines. Today everything in the industry is very siloed. Life insurance is siloed. Car insurance is siloed as are commercial lines. When data is available from numerous different external sources, new solutions will emerge that will cut across different insurance sectors and geographies.

* Solutions could be provided by any insurer worldwide as long as they’re in the network. According to Insurance Business UK based on the metric of net premiums written (NPW) in 2019 UnitedHealth Group based in A...

Procure-to-Pay, in today’s supply chains, is a complicated and lengthy process for corporations and their suppliers across the world. Listen to Orapong Thien-Ngern, CEO of Digital Ventures a subsidiary of Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) in Thailand, as he talks to us about how blockchain technology has reduced procure-to-pay process time by 50% and costs by 70%

We had the pleasure of also being joined by Sharon Yuen, Head of ASEAN sales at R3 who manages the relationship with Digital Ventures.

What is blockchain?

For Sharon, blockchain is a technology that creates a decentralised records of all transactions in the network. Using blockchain technology, participants in the network can confirm transactions independently of a third party intermediary. There's no need for a central trust authority or a central server. From payments and audits to tracking inventory and assets, blockchain technology in supply chain can deliver a new level of trust and transparency, while enabling the procure to pay process to realise huge operational benefits.

For Orapong, whilst blockchain is a distributed ledger it is more than just technology. It’s a new way of thinking or looking at the world. What we believe is the world is going distributed. If we look at the world today things are quite centralised. You go to a bank for your money. You go to a telco if you want to use the telephone. You go to the hospital if you want to see a doctor. Each of those entity keep your record.

Orapong believes that with distributed ledger technology (DLT), all these information records will be distributed in the near future and people own their own digital records. This will fundamentally change the business model of not just banks but all kinds of businesses. Businesses in the future will rely very heavily on data. Once the data becomes truly distributed banks won’t be functioning in the same manner as they are today. Nor will tecos. Core banking infrastructure will change as will billing systems and we’re just at the beginning of this change. Because of all these reasons, SCB is very interested in blockchain and DLT.

 

Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) and Digital Ventures

SCB was established 140 years ago. It’s the first bank in Thailand. In terms of net profit and net assets, SCB is the number one bank in Thailand. But as in the rest of the banking industry, not just in Thailand, the industry is facing some serious challenges. Return on equity five years ago in Thailand was about 22%, now it’s about 9.8%. Price to book ratio used to be 2.2, now it is 0.98. SCB isn’t alone in facing those challenges, the whole industry is facing them. European banks in Europe have a return on equity of 7.4% with a price to book ratio of 0.58, which means it is significantly discounted on book value.

If you plot those two trends, of return on equity and of price to book ratio, Orapong believes that the banking industry is a “sunsetting industry”.

Siam Commercial Bank is very alert of these trends. SCB believes that traditional banking has to evolve as the present market dynamics are very stagnant. For example last year, SCB created what they believed to be the leading mobile application for banking. To introduce its launch and to gain market share they announced zero banking fees. Within half an hour all the other competing banks matched their offer. Ultimately no one gained anything because everyone is willing to do whatever it takes to protect their market share.

Andrew Speers, Director of Product and Innovation at RBS, is passionate about user experience and developing customer centric propositions. In this podcast he discusses the important role blockchain can help as an enabler of other technologies to delivering great user experiences within the financial industry and beyond.

 

What is blockchain?

Andrew recognises that there is no standardised definition to blockchain and his definition comes from as a business user instead of a technologist, engineer or coder. Blockchain is just a distributed ledger technology (DLT). That DLT sits on top of the internet. It is a network of nodes. A node has a unique identity and it stores data.

 

Applications are built on that network like apps in the app store. Nodes can participate in one or many apps, depending on the blockchain. Andrew reminds us of a few more truth regarding DLTs:

* Not every DLT needs a blockchain

* Not every DLT has a crypto asset or crypto currency attached to it

* Not every DLT

 

Disruption within a fragment financial industry

Consumer Connectivity Insights 2018 reveals over 69 percent of global consumers would consider changing their bank, retailer or insurance provider due to a disconnected experience. For Andrew this has happened due capacity utilisation within financial services firms.

The financial industry is fragmented and is being disrupted. It isn’t facing disruption it is being disrupted. The issue at hand is that the banking industry is focused on products along lines of technical expertise rather than building products along the user journey or the user experience. If an individual or a business has a multi-product need it fragments as it moves within the bank. The client first goes through an originations function, then into the credit assessment function, then into operations and/or bespoke product knowledge such FX trading finance, insurance risk and others. Complicated clients with complicated needs have to go through a number of different silos within a financial services firm which creates a hugely disconnected experience for them.

DLT is coming to a maturity point now where it's helping financial firms to knit some of this together to create client centric user experiences by having a distributed architecture with identifiable data from corporates. These can be seamlessly stitched together and bespoke user propositions can be created. Clients can now have a little of FX attached to a little bit of credit assessment, attached to a little bit of trade finance with the exchange of data can be automatically transacted on the distributed ledger thanks to smart contracts, thus improving the user experience.

 

Challenger banks and DLT

Andrew recognises that these type of challenger banks are doing some great work. For specific parts of their business they are seen as challengers. RBS looks to embed the existing or incumbent technologies they’re using to catch up a little bit or to stop them taking transaction and their clients off the periphery as they build scale.

RBS is looking to DLT and how DLT allows banks to attach identity to client data and to their transactional data. It allows RBS to develop solutions with greater efficiencies as RBS does not need to constantly exchange information between the client and itself and their different departments internally, those fragmented silos that were mentioned earlier on. RBS doesn’t have to process, recheck and reprocess those same data points continuously.

It also means that for DLT clients sitting on a shared protocol such as

As smart contracts adoption on the blockchain continue to grow, ensuring end to end security is becoming more important. Oracles, trusted source of data, are increasingly seen as the weakest link in blockchain. In this podcast, Johann Eid, Product Manager and Developer Evangelist, at Chainlink  explains to us the role decentralised oracles can have in providing this end to end security.

 

What is blockchain?

Blockchain is essentially a decentralised ledger. It is transparent and can be public in a similar manner as to Bitcoin. Decentralised, transparent and permissionless technology such as blockchain can have a tremendous impact in the way people interact between each other. Bitcoin was the first type of blockchain before it was followed up with Ethereum. With Ethereum you can develop applications on top of the blockchain thus enabling new ways for people to interact with each other.

 

What is a smart contract?

Contracts are useful when two people who don’t necessarily trust each other want to interact with each other. They give trust to a third party to enforce that the contract executes in a manner that it should. Presently, these third parties are law firms, accountants, banks, and large institutions. Smart contracts embed the logic and enforcement of those contracts on the blockchain.

The properties of smart contracts work in a manner where you have a deterministic input which generates a predictable and consistent output. Thus, whether you have an insurance contract or a derivatives one, due to the properties of blockchain and smart contracts you can have two trust less parties, based in different parts of the world, transact together.

 

Off chain connectivity for smart contracts

Most smart contracts such as parametric insurance contract on the blockchain require real world data. Whether that is data generated by IoT devices or from legacy systems. For example weather related insurance smart contracts would need real world data provided by weather stations. Meaningful data is required to provide the deterministic input to trigger a smart contract.

Chainlink has estimated that 80% of smart contracts require off chain connectivity. Chainlink states that smart contracts are unable to connect with external data feeds, APIs, or any other off-chain resources on their own.

Chainlink acts as an all-purpose HTTP protocol-like equivalent (or HTTPS using a TEE) for messaging at the protocol and application level both on-chain and off-chain. Chainlink nodes are able to format messaging and data from public APIs into a readable format for smart contracts.

 

Are oracles the weakest link on the blockchain?

Oracles is often the name given for a source of data from which a smart contract connects to. Blockchains high level of cryptography makes them very secure. Smart contracts sitting on the blockchain are also secure. However, the oracles that provide real world data to smart contracts, more often than not, sit off chain and are thus sometimes considered to be the weakest link on the blockchain.

Decentralised oracle networks, such as the one provided by Chainlink, provide a means to secure the integrity of the data that is provided to smart contracts. If for example 12 oracles are providing weather data to a smart contract and if one is compromised due to a technical error or malicious activity you still have 11 oracles providing reputable data.

Utilising a centralised, closed source, single oracle to provide a smart contract with real world data there is the risk of compromising the end to end security of the network. That oracle represents a single point of failure which defeats the decentralised nature of building a decentralised applica...

Turlough O’Brien is Head of IT at Aviva Commercial and Aviva UK Blockchain advocate. In this podcast we discuss Aviva’s perspective and lessons learnt with blockchain technology. Aviva is the largest insurer in the UK. It’s a composite that spans right away from car insurance through to equity release products.

 

What is blockchain?

Turlough defines blockchain as a mechanism for creating trust between peers in a distributed manner as opposed to today’s existing centralized trust models. From a technical perspective blockchain is a ledger of blocks. A block is comparable to a digital fingerprint or a unique representation of a piece of data, often a transaction. Once a new block is validated, it is then added to the ledger and cryptographically linked to the previous block. This creates the chain, which is then propagated across the network. This ensures that everyone on the network has confidence in the integrity of the chain.

 

Aviva and blockchain

sAviva Ventures do a lot in terms of investing in start-ups having come through Founders Factory such as the recent investment in Acre which aims to streamline the UK mortgage, insurance and conveyancing process using blockchain.

Throughout 2017 and 2018 Aviva completed three pilots within the broader company:

* a pilot to automate large parts of the supplier invoicing process within supply chains

* an Insurance Claims Fraud Detection pilot and

* an automatic property lease renewal pilot using smart contracts.

Moving beyond the pilots, Aviva continue to remain vigilant of the emerging opportunities with DLT. Aviva has an active working committee led by their group Chief Data architect to assess and triage opportunities coming through.

However, the focus has shifted onto consortia, whereby throughout 2019 Aviva has been actively involved in the consortia space and joined B3i.

 

Joining a consortium

One of the things that Aviva learned from its pilots was the value of the network and having the participants on the network.

The decision to join B3i was predicated on the network effect, meaning that the value of a blockchain-powered solutions increases as the number of participants using the solution increases and so it was a realisation of the value of the network and not the technology.

The rational being that the technology is not as much a challenge as participation on the blockchain, to quote John Carolin “Blockchain should be viewed as a team sport”.  Consequently there is a lot of value in the consortia versus the technology and having all participants in the insurance value chain on the blockchain is key.

We only have to look at the numerous attempts to modernise the insurance industry which failed to gain traction owing to the lack of adoption. From a commercial insurance perspective B3i probably has the broadest coverage of participation across the insurance value chain on the network. They spent a lot of time on engagement and building the network. It’s also a way of avoiding the “technology looking for a problem” scenario as the participants are required to realise the emerging business use cases.

 

When will blockchain be widely adopted in the insurance industry?

For Turlough that’s the million dollar question. He believes that it is hard to gauge and that from a technical perspective, it's very tricky. Bearing in mind that technology that has been around for a long time such as EDI and XML messaging, API’s and mainframes are still active in insurance so it’s hard to gauge exactly when blockchain will become prevalent in insurance.