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The Bank of China’s insurance arm launched Monday an insurance blockchain, according to Chinese news outlet Sina Finance. The “China Banking Insurance Information Alliance Chain”, built on Hyperledger Fabric, is used to store insurance policies in one place.
The point of this is to create an alliance of mutual trust within the industry, and “enhance the mutual recognition of the [insurance] policy.”
Insurance policies are difficult to tamper with due to blockchain’s immutable ledger. Storage of these policies is distributed across the network, meaning that there is no one point of failure, and far less paperwork.
Right now, the Bank of China uses the blockchain to host insurance policies of both consumers and businesses. By the end of September, the insurance company had accumulated more than 4 million electronic insurance policies.
The Bank of China also asks for other businesses to register new policies on the blockchain, and many companies are also testing and preparing to join the network.
The Bank of China’s system seems to rival Ping An, China’s largest insurance company, who this year announced a partnership with SingularityNET to develop its infrastructure through the Ethereum blockchain.
Insurance is big business in China: even though only eight percent of China's population have life insurance, China’s size makes it the second largest insurance market in the world. China’s insurance market has seen steady growth, growing at almost twenty percent for the last decade.
The Bank of China’s blockchain initiative is just one example of China's newfound enthusiasm for blockchain technology. Recently, President Xi Jinping spoke highly of blockchain, causing the price of Bitcoin to skyrocket. A report Monday from the International Data Corporation (IDC) predicted that Chinese businesses would spend $2 billion on blockchain by 2023. China is here to stay.