Cognizant, Indian Insurers Dev. Blockchain Based Data Sharing Platform

Fortune 500 company Cognizant (Nasdaq: CTSH), in collaboration with a consortium of Indian insurance companies, has developed a blockchain solution to facilitate data-sharing that will enable risk of data breaches, money-laundering, and fraud. The insurance companies will also be able to offer better service to customers through better record-keeping, improved process efficiency, and accelerated turnaround time.

The consortium of Indian insurance companies include SBI Life Insurance, Canara HSBC OBC Life Insurance, Max Life Insurance, Edelweiss Tokio Life, Birla Sun Life Insurance, IDBI Federal Life Insurance, PNB MetLife, HDFC Life, Kotak Life, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, Tata AIA Life, Bharti AXA, Aegon Life IndiaFirst Life Insurance, and SUD (Star Union Dai-ichi) Life Insurance.

It is the first distributed ledger initiative by the consortium. The software solution is built on Corda, R3’s distributed ledger platform, and hosted on Microsoft’s cloud computing platform Azure.The solution will assist the insurers to reduce their reliance on aggregators and data intermediaries in obtaining customer and policy details for a wide range of important purposes, such as risk assessment, due diligence, fraud detection, regulatory compliance, and financial and medical underwriting.

Storing data on blockchain will also enable participating insurers to avoid duplication of procedures, reduce operating costs, and streamline approvals. The data can be accessed real-time. Furthermore, the transparency and consistency of records can be audited at any time.

Anand Pejawar, President — Operations, IT & International Business, SBI Life stated

“Blockchain has the potential to catalyze a significant shift in the insurance industry’s underlying technology and business models. With its model of immutable and decentralized data, and its ability to prevent tampered documents and false billings from falling through the cracks, blockchain can enable insurance providers to introduce new models, reinvent processes, and increase capacity. We are pleased to be a part of this path-breaking consortium of Indian life insurers and collaborate with Cognizant on driving distributed ledger innovations of tomorrow.”

Viswanand, Chief Operating Officer, Max Life Insurance said

“By transforming how insurance companies operate and interact with stakeholders across the value chain, blockchain can rewrite the rules of competition in the insurance industry. The shared infrastructure provided by the distributed ledger, smart contracts and non-repudiation capabilities of blockchain can dramatically enhance the insurance value chain, and pave the way to greater automation in requesting, exchanging and entering data. The partnership between our consortium and Cognizant is a significant step forward in leveraging the long-term strategic benefits of the technology and turning better customer experience into a competitive advantage.”

Arun Baid, Global Delivery Head for Insurance, Cognizant said

“As a shared source of truth, blockchain opens numerous possibilities for insurers to collaborate more effectively and transparently, make better informed decisions, and create greater trust and accountability, while disintermediating data aggregators. Our comprehensive blockchain and domain capabilities built over the years have made us a trusted advisor for insurance companies to realize distributed ledger’s full potential. We are proud to be a part of the consortium’s vision to create a more secure, streamlined ecosystem that can accommodate disruptive business models of tomorrow.”