NEW YORK -- Marsh, a global leader in insurance broking and innovative risk management solutions, in collaboration with IBM, ACORD and ISN, announced today the first commercial blockchain solution for proof of insurance.

By using blockchain technology, Marsh is fundamentally transforming the certificate of insurance process from complicated and manual to streamlined and transparent, allowing clients to speed up necessary business functions such as hiring contractors and transferring risk while increasing coverage certainty.

Built on the open source Hyperledger Fabric technology and IBM Blockchain Platform, Marsh is developing the commercial proof of insurance solution in conjunction with IBM, with input from ACORD, and customer feedback from ISN.

"Marsh sees great opportunity in leveraging blockchain technology to better serve our clients by maximizing efficiency and creating new opportunities in the insurance value chain," said Sastry Durvasula, chief digital officer and chief data & analytics officer, Marsh. "We believe strategic engagements such as this one with IBM, ACORD, and ISN will help accelerate the adoption of further blockchain applications benefiting our clients across industries."

A distributed ledger technology, blockchain is ideally suited to large networks of partners. It establishes a shared, immutable record of all the transactions that take place within a network and then enables permissioned parties access to trusted data in real-time.

Since proof of insurance is a key business requirement in many industries, this blockchain solution opens the door to creating a network of networks to provide verification on a much broader scale.

"Vastly simplifying the process for providing proof of insurance is a key enabler of business. IBM is committed to connecting emerging blockchain networks to facilitate the next generation economy. This is an ideal example of how blockchain can be used on a much broader scale to drive real business results," said Sandip Patel, general manager, insurance industry, IBM.

Currently in pilot, Marsh's new blockchain network is expected to go into production later this year. ISN, a global leader in contractor and supplier information management headquartered in Dallas, Texas, is the first Marsh client to pilot the solution.

"The insurance industry has been dependent on paper certificates of insurance, manually populated by an insurance agent," said Brett Parker, technical insurance lead, ISN. "By digitizing the policy information, we can streamline the process saving our customers time to focus on their core competencies."

Bill Pieroni, president and CEO of ACORD, added: "This blockchain solution is key to evolving standards, enhancing data leverage, and enabling state-of-the-market technology to better integrate ACORD members and foster innovation."

Marsh