Wei Yingning, former vice chairman of China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC), has said that blockchain technology could revolutionise the country’s insurance sector.
“In the modern insurance industry, the cost of auditing accounts for 30% or even 40% of the total. Even so, the ratio of insurance fraud in China is still not small. Therefore, the insurance industry is looking closely at blockchain technology,” he said. “In the case of insurance claims, a smart contract will be triggered to execute provisions, thus solving the problem of compensation settlement and lower auditing costs. Blockchain can reshape the integral foundations of insurance.”
Several insurance initiatives have been launched in China to increase adoption of blockchain technology. In 2016, Ping An Insurance, the country’s second-largest insurer with RMB4.7 trillion (US$682.9 billion) in assets, joined the R3 Consortium, which develops distributed ledger technology for the world’s financial markets.
The country’s life insurance sector grew by 55% in 2016, with premium income reaching RMB2.9 trillion (US$421.3 billion).
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