By Liew Yoke On, MII Chief Marketing Officer

The insurance industry is known to be more cautious than others and at times sceptical toward innovation. Insurance companies often fall behind in this era of digitalisation largely due to traditional business operations, time-consuming processes and heavy regulatory requirements. In its efforts to stay abreast with ongoing changes, blockchain is one emerging technology that seems promising.

Why Blockchain?

Blockchain leads to new opportunities and benefits to many industries that depend on security and confidentiality in their transactions, including insurance. Like banking, confidentiality and security are non-negotiable requirements in the insurance business. Blockchain provides the ideal platform for secure and efficient transactions.

Blockchain transactions are made up of a series of stored blocks. Each block is linked to the next block, which makes hacking quite a tedious process as hackers would have to alter every block that followed. Each transaction is time-stamped and unalterable, making identities far more secure and data more trustworthy. However, blockchain like any other technology is susceptible to attacks. As blockchain matures, so do hacker techniques. To ensure it remains secure, regulatory agencies and law enforcements will have to be better equipped to prevent attacks.