ANZ and IBM, in conjunction with Suncorp New Zealand, are working to develop a blockchain solution for the insurance industry that will help make the data transfer and payment reconciliation process faster and more transparent.

Blockchain, a distributed ledger technology, is a secure and decentralised way of sharing data and transactions.

Paul Goodwin, managing director for ANZ’s institutional business in New Zealand, said that reconciling policy information and premium payments made by a broker to an insurer on behalf of customers is currently a slow and painful process.

“The blockchain solution will be much more efficient for the industry as well as being very secure. As a ‘single source of truth’, it will provide greater visibility throughout the process, remove uncertainty and help make response times faster,” he commented.

ANZ has already experimented with blockchain with its property guarantees solution. Together with IBM, the bank has released a proof-of-concept white paper on the technology, and how it can benefit the insurance industry.

“Distributed ledger technologies are driving major efficiencies across many industries by enabling previously complex, manual processes to operate in real time with full transparency,” said Mike Smith, managing director at IBM New Zealand.

A report from EY last year said that blockchain has the potential to revolutionise and transform industry thinking about data sharing and security.

“In considering the technology, senior business and IT leaders must balance their natural scepticism about ‘next big thing’ trends with a clear recognition of both the largescale impacts and significant upside,” the report read.

“It’s not hard to see how distributed, secure, peer-to-peer ledgers - the mysterious and exotic-sounding technology behind blockchain - may one day be as common in the insurance industry as Structured Query Language (SQL) databases,” EY stated, adding that blockchain has the potential to evolve into a core, underlying element in the technology ‘stacks’ of most insurers.

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