ANZ and IBM develop blockchain solution for Suncorp

“Reconciling policy information and premium payments made by a broker to an insurer on behalf of customers is a slow and painful process,” says Paul Goodwin, ANZ managing director institutional NZ.

“The blockchain solution will be much more efficient for the industry as well as being very secure. As a ‘single source of truth’, it will provide greater visibility throughout the process, remove uncertainty and help make response times faster,” says Goodwin, in a statement.

“This technology will work with existing industry solutions to capture relevant information; ensuring payments can be forecast and made without the need for reconciliation.”

The project is one of the first of its kind in New Zealand to utilise blockchain, a distributed ledger technology.

The goal is to make the data transfer and payment reconciliation process faster and more transparent between brokers and insurers.

Credit: Reseller News

“Distributed ledger technologies are driving major efficiencies across many industries by enabling previously complex, manual processes to operate in real time with full transparency,” says Mike Smith, managing director, IBM New Zealand. 

“IBM used design-led thinking principles and practices to reinvent the business processes behind intermediated insurance at ANZ.

“The result is an interoperable network that could not only decrease policy costs and improve customer service, but also build a foundation for the introduction of other transformative technologies, such as artificial intelligence.”

“We’re always looking at ways to generate operational efficiencies and the proof of concept was an exciting way to test whether a technology solution can speed up the reconciliation process for insurance premium payments, while at the same time improving the customer experience for policyholders and our business partners,” says Tim Buckett, chief financial officer at Suncorp NZ.

The solution built during this project successfully demonstrated the use of distributed ledgers in three areas, according to the proof-of-concept white paper on the technology.

The first is efficient data transfer without the need for multiple reconciliations and rekeying throughout a multi-party purchase of an insurance policy.

The second is consolidation into one data exchange system, giving clarity of the status of policies throughout their lifecycle to allow greater visibility, reporting and insights.

The third is automated allocation of receipts for bulk payments down to the individual policy/invoice level.

“The experience of running a distributed ledger solution within New Zealand considering new tools for our customers’ problems has given us great insight into the process.

“The technical knowledge built within New Zealand is invaluable and will play an important role of how we remain an important part of our customers’  ecosystems,” according to the report by ANZ and IBM.