Insurance Giant Allianz Is Working on a Token-Based Blockchain Ecosystem

German financial services giant Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty SE (AGCS) is developing a blockchain-based ecosystem to facilitate cross-border insurance payments for its corporate customers.

Experimentations with blockchain technology

Allianz is working on a token-based blockchain system, expecting it to streamline international insurance payments for its corporate customers, Forbes reported on Aug. 8. An Allianz spokesperson told Forbes that the company is still in the experimentation phase, although the basic core infrastructure of the ecosystem has already been built and tested.

The spokesperson further explained that Allianz will next examine money transfers with a limited scope and for a short period of time in order to prove hypothesis. The spokesperson said:

"AGCS is further exploring blockchain technology to simplify and accelerate cross-border insurance payments for its corporate customers. A project team is in the advanced stages of development for a token-based electronic payment system to allow for frictionless, transparent and instantaneous money transfers for a range of different types [of] payments."

Controversial stance on crypto assets

Worth noting, the CEO of Allianz Global Investors Andreas Utermann called for crypto assets to be “outlawed” last December, saying that he was “personally surprised that regulators haven’t stepped in harder.”

Conversely, Allianz’s Christian Weishuber said last summer that the company was exploring the crypto insurance sphere, saying, “insurance for cryptocurrency storage will be a big opportunity […] digital assets are becoming more relevant, important and prevalent.”

Meanwhile, United States insurance giant State Farm and military-affiliated bank United Services Automobile Association were testing a blockchain-based subrogation solution with real claims data to automate and streamline the subrogation process in insurance claims as of the end of May.

State Farm Innovation Executive Mike Fields commented on the large scale of subrogation claims, and alluded to why streamlining the process would be desirable:

“In 2018 alone, the total amount of dollars demanded and issued through the subrogation process was over $9.6 Billion for all insurance carriers. You can imagine the time and resources required to complete these transactions.”