Etherisc: Enabling a wide range of insurance applications
Etherisc has a vision for the future of insurance, in which a decentralized platform allows individuals, groups of people, companies, and organizations to create decentralized insurance applications.
The global insurance business is enormous, with $4.7 trillion in premiums written in 2016 [source: iii.org]. It’s also an industry mired in a misalignment of incentives between consumers and insurance companies, with a heavy regulatory environment that strives to keep this imbalance in check, but results in huge overheads that are financed by inflated premiums in a market consolidated around just a few big players.
Ripe for Disruption
It’s an environment that is ripe for a disruption, and Etherisc is working to bring about meaningful change while respecting the positive values of the existing industry. Our vision is thus to create and maintain a Decentralized Insurance Platform (DIP) that enables decentralized insurance applications running on a free, open, and standard protocol on the Ethereum blockchain.
This platform will enable individuals, groups of people, companies, and organizations to create their own insurance applications. The smart contract-based platform will deliver to consumers an efficient, completely transparent, less costly system that requires little or no regulation.
A Classic Example
Imagine a town — whether in the developed or developing world — that wants to insure local farmers against crop damage. Today, the custom policy they would need is either priced exorbitantly high or is simply unavailable. Collecting claims with such a policy can be a long, hard struggle, especially in developing nations.
In sharp contrast, the Etherisc DIP will give the farmers in this case the tools to create their own specific insurance product that suits their needs, at a far lesser cost. This way, for the first time, the investment opportunities and claims process will be in the hands of individual and often local participants with mutual interests in a community and supported by an immutable smart contract, rather than controlled by a large, remote, opaque, traditional insurance company.
Shaking the Value Chain
Nowadays, when you buy an insurance product, you also buy various insurance services that are bundled opaquely inside this product. Etherisc’s goal is to reshape the entire insurance value chain by unbundling those services in a transparent and decentralized fashion, thus realigning the incentives of the customers and insurance service providers.
Etherisc now has a dedicated, experienced team working on the Decentralized Insurance Platform. Furthermore, to prove the value of the platform, we’ve also developed our initial insurance product, Etherisc Flight Delay. This will likely be the first licensed insurance product to be entirely on the blockchain. Other products from across the insurance spectrum are also in our pipeline.
To continue fulfilling our vision, we are putting together a token sale to be held later this year. With your support we can create a platform that will democratize access to insurance and make it available to a wider range of people, under better conditions and prices.
We are organizing the second Decentralized Insurance Developer Conference in Prague on October 29. Join 200+ blockchain enthusiasts and insurtech experts to see how decentralized insurance is moving from experimental stage into reality. Learn how you can participate.
