Global leader of the insurance industry, MetLife is all set to revolution the industry by the use of blockchain technology. MetLife will revamp its use of Ethereum Blockchain in its operations, with the aim of enhancing transparency and efficiency in the claims settlement process.
The company’s Singaporean incubator, LumenLab has entered into partnerships with Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) and NTUC Income, for a smart contract platform dubbed ‘Lifechain.’ This will help the family or relatives of the deceased to determine where he or she was insured, and after that, the file claim accordingly. Lifechain is expected to be the world’s first pilot blockchain project focused on the insurance sector.
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MetLife Chief Investment Officer (CIO), Zia Zaman stated that it was important from three different angles, which are security, database, multi-party participation. He further said,
If you try technology that has been around for twenty years, you’re not going to learn as much as if you try it with a decentralized system like DLT, and that’s advantageous because we are realizing that there is a lower cost of implementation for this system versus the other way.
Zia further noted that the third point, multi-party participation, is extremely crucial for large scale operations, as the involvement of stakeholders like the governments is equally important.
The future of distributed ledger technology in life insurance will somewhat depend on public sector involvement. Those jurisdictions and governments that are more innovative will see citizens and policyholders in their jurisdictions benefit from less friction, more fulfilled payments, and a general overall improved experience.
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Insurance is one of those industries which rarely sees a downfall and is in fact poised for a major boom in the coming years. As more and more people get insured, the number of claims will rise too, which make blockchain extremely vital, considering its capabilities to handle large amounts of data without any bias. Since MetLife is first to incorporate it, it will definitely have a technological edge over its competitors, which could be the deciding factor in global dominance.
