Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is going into shipping insurance. When shipping products from one point to another, several things might go wrong: a congested port delays docking, cargo gets damaged, pirates raid a ship or a storm throws a vessel off course.
Marine insurance happens to be one of the oldest and at the same time the least efficient categories of insurance. Shaun Crawford, who leads consulting firm Ernst & Young’s insurance business, is one of the top officials that concurred with this fact.
The Danish shipping company, Maersk, previously completed a 20-week blockchain proof of concept trial for marine insurance thus receiving praise from most of the interested parties. It has also struck numerous partnerships which it hopes will help securely share shipping data on a blockchain.
KSI is a blockchain developed by Guardtime and its technology is said to have underpinned the tech-savvy nation Estonia, for the test. Maersk took to using it since the platform is considered a working solution when it comes to making the auditing aspects of any shipping supply chain easy. It is what different parties require in order to settle upon the various conditions stipulated in premiums in a timely manner. From time to time the parties have been in dire need to tamper-resistance and with the solution things are changing positively.
Maersk’s head of risk and insurance, Lars Henneberg in making a statement regarding the experiment opined, “Insurance transactions are currently far too tedious and frictional. Blockchain technology has the potential to facilitate the desired development that is long overdue.”
A large number of partners on the project seemed quite impressed with the results. They were rather drawn to the fact that the technology showcased a huge potential to significantly reduce, cost, time as well as risk across the whole insurance value chain.
There is a wild rush among the different parties to take advantage of the block chain’s immense capabilities in the tracking of anything that flows within it. Maersk is in the frontline when it comes to those companies that have shown determination to put blockchains to the test.