"Blockchain is becoming a force for good in many areas of society – bringing banking to the unbanked in the developing world and minimising election fraud are just two examples, but there is still a lot of head scratching going on when it comes to insurance. A recent PwC survey of insurers said that 56% recognised the importance of blockchain, but 57% said they didn’t know how to respond.
Yet respond they must."
Nick Edwards CEO The Marketing Eye
Blockchain has been around over 10 years and yet still at times seems to be a solution looking for a problem. A great space for developers to experiment but business people to leave them to it.
If an insurer can maintain a long-term relationship with customers why can't a single digital record deliver the service the customer needs with the efficiencies the insurer craves?
What will blockchain do to deliver a better product?There are promising hints but also lots of cul-de-sacs and ideas masquerading as products.
Blockchain needs to mature fast if it is to achieve the potential it promises.
David Packard, co-founder of Hewlett Packard, said in the 1990s: “To warrant serious pursuit, an idea must be both practical and useful. Out of those ideas that are practical, a smaller number are useful. To be useful, an invention must not only fulfil a need, it must be an economical and efficient solution to that need.” If insurance brands – large and small – can’t keep this thought at the front of their minds when looking at the potential of blockchain, they will fall into one of the biggest traps in new product development – building it because they can, not because they should.