Marsh becomes first insurance broker to join blockchain alliance

Marsh has joined the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), the world’s largest open source blockchain initiative with more than 400 member companies.

The EEA seeks to create open industry standards and frameworks for blockchain applications based on the core Ethereum platform.

Marsh is the first insurance broker to be part of the EEA, which includes some of the world’s leading organisations in technology, financial services, healthcare, energy and manufacturing, and a number of fast-growing startups.

As a member of the EEA, Marsh will play an active role in the insurance and digital identity working groups, collaborating with the alliance members in leading and driving the adoption of blockchain applications.

Sastry Durvasula, chief digital officer and chief data and analytics officer at Marsh, said: “We see the potential of blockchain technology as having a game-changing impact on the risk management and insurance industry—one that enables the creation of new business models, products, and platforms that better serve our clients in the new economy.”

“By joining the EEA, we will be able to collaborate with other members to explore new solutions and disruptive use cases, while participating in the evolution of Ethereum into enterprise-grade blockchain technology.”

Marsh also recently joined The Institutes RiskBlock Alliance, a risk management and insurance industry enterprise-level blockchain consortium that seeks to leverage the blockchain to lower industry transaction costs while increasing the speed and security of data transfers among customers, industry stakeholders and third parties.

Karim Derrick, head of research and development at Kennedys Law, recently said that one immediate application for blockchain in claims could be protection against fraud.

Mark Dugdale