Unlocking the blockchain: Digitizing the insurance value chain - Chapter 2

An R3 and Norton Rose Fulbright white paper

Our global blockchain team has published a global legal and regulatory guide titled ‘Unlocking the blockchain’.

Overview

Interest in blockchain technologies has grown dramatically over the last twelve months.

This has triggered growth in investment in businesses operating in this area and marked engagement from all industry sectors (and financial institutions in particular) in blockchain technologies and their disruptive potential. Such engagement has led to the development of increasingly sophisticated proof-of-concept use cases and notable live deployments.

In view of these developments, we have produced a new global legal and regulatory guide to blockchain technologies in which we explore the regulatory considerations and a range of other legal issues that should be taken into account with any proposed deployment. The guide will be published in a series of chapters, with the first one covering ‘an introduction to blockchain technologies’ that we invite you to read.

Chapter 2: Digitizing the insurance value chain

Digitizing the insurance value chain through the use of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT) has the potential to revolutionise the insurance market, from the way insurance products are distributed, underwritten and administered, to the way the market is regulated.

Perhaps even more exciting than the benefits of digitizing the distribution chain is the potential for innovative new products and new business models to transform the industry. Much like the expansion of applications for the world wide web from two initial use cases at its launch - sending emails and file transfer - to the seemingly limitless use cases available today, distributed ledger technologies present a fertile ground for an explosion of innovation in the insurance industry.

When considering the use of these technologies, industry players will need to fully appreciate the challenges and risks. Any proposed deployment will need to take a broad range of legal and regulatory factors into consideration. In view of this, Norton Rose Fulbright, in association with R3, have produced a global legal and regulatory guide to DLT Use Cases in the Insurance Industry.

R3 is a leading consortium working with over 60 of the world’s largest financial institutions to develop ground-breaking commercial applications for the financial services industry that leverage the appropriate elements of distributed and shared ledger technology.

Read the chapter on the FinTech hub hosted by the NRF Institute.

After registering, the FinTech hub can be found in the ‘Knowledge hubs’ dropdown menu.

If you would like to discuss any aspect of this topic further, please get in touch.