Blockchain Slump? Banks May Be Fatigued But Insurers Are Pumped

Progress reports on blockchain projects in the banking and insurance sectors offered an illuminating comparison at the Blockchain Expo in London Thursday.

The tone for banking was set on a panel looking at the potential of blockchain for financial services, where Claudia Coppenolle, head of digital market management for Deutsche Bank, began by acknowledging her belief that the hype cycle around business applications for blockchain is clearly past its peak.

Etherisc co-founder Christoph Mussenbrock arguably looked further toward a decentralized future than his banking counterparts, boasting that his startup has a live product where the insurance payout is triggered by data fed to the ethereum blockchain - in this case records of flights arriving and departing.

Oliver Volk, the blockchain expert at Allianz's reinsurance unit, spoke on behalf of the B3i insurance consortium, which he said has been expanded rapidly, adding 23 new members to the original founding group of 15 following the first outing of a prototype for contractual management.

"In the claims process there are lots of parties involved, so [it's] a good area for blockchain; we just need to get our data standards sorted out," said Baier.

Herve Francois, the blockchain lead at the Dutch bank ING, for example, agreed the hype is definitely past.

"We are a global operation and our clients have broad needs. ... If our payment engine fails because we were trying out some new blockchain KYC thing, our clients would get very upset."

"When you talk about blockchain and scale it's a little bit easier for the insurance industry than in financial services," he said.

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