EY's Maritime Blockchain Insurance Tech Is Now Live

A group of companies piloting a blockchain-based insurance platform for the global shipping industry announced on Friday that the technology is now live in commercial use.

Dubbed Insurwave, the blockchain platform was developed by professional services firm Ernst & Young and software company Guardtime based on Microsoft's Azure cloud-based technology. It was built on top of R3's open-source Corda platform.

As previously reported by CoinDesk, the Denmark-based shipping giant Maersk first joined the group in September of last year to deploy the solution in a pilot phase. Other notable participants in the test included insurers MS Amlin and XL Catlin.

The end goal, the group said, is to allow each party in the shipping insurance ecosystem to use a distributed ledger that would record shipment information and automate insurance transactions when needed, which touts an ability to bring efficiency and transparency.

The group expects the platform to execute over half a million automated blockchain transactions for more than 1,000 vessels over the first year of its use in a live, commercial environment.

Further down the road, EY said it also plans to extend the application to other types of business insurance, including global logistics, aviation and energy.

Today's announcement also marks the latest effort by Maersk to actively apply blockchain technology in its operations.

Currently, the firm is also working with IBM to adopt a global trade digitization platform built on the Hyperledger Fabric 1.0 blockchain to record and transact cargo information along the global shipping supply chain.

Maersk shipping image via Shutterstock