The insurance industry is beginning to understand the importance that blockchain technology has due to its security and immutability features. In addition to blockchain helps to enhance solutions to make online transactions more bearable. The growth of the online insurance sector is a reality that is encountering an important ally in blockchain technology. In China this is the case with ZhongAn, the largest online insurer in that country.
Insurance sales used to depend on individual agents and sellers, with a whole process of meetings, chats and paperwork that used to result in waste of time and efficiency on many occasions. The current trend and that can result in a definite way of doing things soon in the sector, is to do the whole process of purchasing insurance online. Clients no longer want to be using papers as proof of their policies, they want to access their benefits and use them directly, deciding where, when and to which hospital to attend.
For an online insurance company like ZhongAn this turns out to be their day to day, and if blockchain is in the equation, the result will be much better, and that is clear to them. “Insurance is backed by statistics and blockchain will help connect that massive and varied information,” Chen Wei, head of technology at ZhongAn Online Property and Casualty Insurance told a digital media recently. ZhongAn currently has data exchange agreements with more than 100 hospitals in China to help them streamline their existing records and claims. Imagine that powered by blockchain, and we will be seeing a successful case of blockchain use in the online insurance industry.
ZhongAn Technology is a specialized incubator that emerged from Zhong An, China’s first fully digital and online insurer. This company was founded in 2013 by Jack Ma, the president of the Alibaba Group, among other important Chinese executives. ZhongAn Technology currently serves 10 Chinese insurers. ZhongAn helps these companies adapt their services to their clients and improve risk analysis. These insurers use blockchain to securely store their insurance policies in ZhongAn online.
ZhongAn Technology also partnered with Shanghai’s insurance regulatory office to create an operational blockchain reinsurance platform, with the idea of improving the security and traceability of reinsurance policies. Blockchain is demonstrating in a real environment, of great proportions and of significant complexities, its value as technology of operability, security and agility of operations in the online insurance sector.
It is important to consider that this happens in China, a country that despite the harsh regulations imposed on certain activities related to cryptography, is advancing on its part with a vision of incorporating blockchain technology in its state plans, even including it in its thirteenth five-year plan, which consists of a road map of governmental developments from 2016 to 2020. Blockchain grows, and China knows it.
