Welcome to another episode in ours News Flash series, where we share the latest developments in the blockchain space, straight off the press. Today we are joined again by Ranvir Saggu, who previously featured in Ep.8 – Building a Blockchain PoC/Pilot, and we welcome Bradley Brandon-Cross to Insureblocks for the first time.

Ranvir is CEO at Blocksure – a blockchain business specifically focussing on implementing blockchain in the insurance space, and is currently focussing on Blocksure OS, which is a platform set to revolutionise the insurance industry. He is a seasoned insurance executive with over 25 years in-depth experience across various composite insurers, with hands-on experience in delivering large transformational programmes at the highest level.

Bradley is Managing Director at Commercial & General– a small independent insurance broker which focuses on both commercial and consumer insurance lines. Bradley also has a wealth of experience in insurance, leading GE Capital’s primary insurance business in Europe and responsible for innovative products such as the first Shariah compliant insurance product authorised by the FSA.

Ranvir and his team at Blocksure have been developing Blocksure OS for 4 years, with 2 years in concept and 2 years spent on PoC and validation. Throughout the final year they were looking for pioneering brokers to partner with in designing an innovative concept product on their new platform. Bradley and his team at Commercial & General were instantly excited by the technology and the prospect of reducing costs and improving customer flow and beginning product development on their Blocksure OS platform.

The Product

Together with Covéa Insurance, Blocksure and Commercial & General are releasing Insure Now. Insure Now is a tenant’s policy targeted at millennials, where blockchain facilitates policy administration and premium collection with the entire insurance methodology built around the technology. It is the first insurance product in Europe which utilises blockchain and the first product to be built on the Blocksure OS platform, which uses a microservice architecture with R3’s corda platform at its core. The product is smartphone based, with an app controlling the interactions of the customer, catering for their every need through a simple user interface on their phone, a revolution in the paperwork heavy insurance world.

The blockchain engine allows secure and validated contracts in each part of the database which can be viewed in real-time by all parties, behind a web-enabled front end. Previous platforms utilised for tenant’s insurance have been plagued by issues with database integrity and data transferral between brokers and insurers, and third-party administrators. However, blockchain should alleviate some of the back-office costs by removing these issues and a huge amount of the administrative mess, ensuring that companies can focus on the customer experience. Real-time updates and automated functionality allow changes to policies to be administered with minimal fuss and within seconds, reducing cost and time and providing obvious benefits to the customer.

What challenges have been faced in blockchain adoption?

At Commercial & General, one of the main hurdles to overcome was understand...