Marsh, a global insurance broking and risk management firm, has announced that it is expanding its collaboration with tech giant IBM to provide clients with wider access to the blockchain solution for proof of insurance. By using blockchain technology, Marsh and IBM are working together to transform the certificate of insurance process from complicated and manual, to streamlined and transparent, allowing clients to speed up necessary business functions such as hiring contractors.

Marsh first collaborated with IBM in April of this year for the commercial proof of insurance solution with input from insurance standards firm ACORD and customer feedback from ISN, the global contractor and supplier information management firm. The blockchain is built on the open source Hyperledger Fabric technology and IBM Blockchain Platform.

Marsh will now take advantage of IBM’s strategic relationship with customer relationship management (CRM) giant Salesforce. Marsh will work with IBM to extend its commercial proof of insurance blockchain solution to be directly accessible to Marsh clients through the Salesforce Platform. Commenting on the expansion, Sastry Durvasula, Marsh’s Chief Digital, Data, and Analytics Officer, said: 

“By making proof of insurance accessible digitally and instantaneously for our clients through Salesforce, we are streamlining a key business requirement through easy and secure sharing of proof of insurance.”

The blockchain or a distributed ledger technology is gaining traction across the industries and the functions. The technology establishes a shared, immutable record of all the transactions that take place within a network and then enables permissioned parties access to trusted data in real-time. Since proof of insurance is a key business requirement in many industries, this blockchain solution allows the creation of a network of networks to provide verification on a much broader scale. Sandip Patel, General Manager, Insurance Industry, IBM said:

“Distributed ledger technologies are driving efficiency across many industries by enabling legacy manual processes to operate more efficiently and with greater transparency and trust. This innovation is an ideal example of how blockchain can be used to drive real business results and collaboration in the insurance industry.”

Last month, insurance company MetLife Asia’s Singapore-based innovation center, LumenLab, begun testing the world’s first, automated insurance solution using blockchain technology to offer pregnant women financial protection in case of gestational diabetes, without ever needing to make a claim.

According to a research report by iPR Daily, a global technology media outlet focusing on intellectual property (IP) ecosystem, IBM is ranked No. 2 position for filing the highest number of blockchain-related patents till date. According to another report from Juniper Research showed that IBM is a leader in blockchain innovation. The tech giant emerged as a market leader in each of the 3 Innovation Indices (Digital Identity, Provenance, and Financial Services) based on the quantitative and qualitative assessment of product offerings, R&D activities, and future potential.