Etherisc Updates: Flight Delay, HurricaneGuard, and ILS/Lending Insurance Group Advances Moving Forward
In this update, discover the Etherisc team’s September progress
Last month, we told you about the progress we made in taking care of all the details related to our Token Generating Event (TGE). This month, we are happy to report on the progress of our overall vision and specific products.
Flight Delay is taking off
First of all, we can report on a few developments with Flight Delay:
- After being included among the 29 new companies accepted into the UK FCA’s regulatory sandbox, we are moving forward to test Flight Delay within the Authority’s controlled environment. Tests are to be conducted on a short-term and small-scale basis, in accordance with the FCA’s requirements, to test parameters and to assure the FCA that we are building in appropriate consumer safeguards.
- We are working to find global distributors for Flight Delay, and are in discussions with a potential distributor from Brazil. We’ve been able to define a regulatory strategy and a go-to-market plan in this case, and are working toward getting a Letter of Intent signed.
- In a similar fashion, we are in discussions with a potential distributor for low-cost airlines.
ILS Working Group has met!
Second, with respect to our insurance-linked securities (ILS) activities, we are happy to report that we’ve held our first ILS Working Group meetings. The group is led by Theo Freybote and is working to define a go-to-market strategy and a business model. We are also evaluating candidates for the types of risk to be securitized.
The CPIC is moving forward
Third, in the area of crypto-backed lending protection insurance, we’ve held a meeting with select members of the new Collateral Protection Insurance Consortium, conducted research on user needs, and further defined insurable risks. The next step is to form a team of keepers and select a specific type of risk around which we can build an MVP in Q4 this year.
HurricaneGuard is developing fast
Fourth, we have a lot of news regarding the ongoing development of HurricaneGuard. This idea has grown out of work we’ve been doing and people we’ve met in Puerto Rico over the past 18 months.
We had a consultation with the Commissioner of Insurance of Puerto Rico on August 17 and are currently in communications about the product rollout. We are now moving forward with preparing the necessary authorizations to bring HurricaneGuard to Puerto Rico, as well as on-boarding initial distribution partners.
We’ve been discussing options about how to make HurricaneGuard available to consumers in Puerto Rico. We’ve delineated its capabilities and key differences with traditional non-parametric products, as well the difference between it and products that don’t use blockchain.
For example, non-blockchain-based products have little to no capabilities for regulators to monitor exposure (the amount of risk liabilities) in real time. Without such monitoring, it can often take many months before it is known an insurance company is encountering troubles and unable to meet its obligations.
Meanwhile, we are continuously improving our data models and working on a testing environment with real-time data coming from events like hurricane Florence. The prediction model we use for that is one of the generally available models. Our plan is to begin writing policies for the next hurricane season in Puerto Rico. If things go well, then we can expand it to other regions of the Caribbean and Eastern US.
Great work by the Insurance Commissioner!
By the way, our experience has led us to view the Puerto Rican government and its Office of the Insurance Commissioner as a great example of regulatory innovation and resilience. We hope that regulators in other Caribbean nations and across the Eastern US seaboard follow Puerto Rico’s example and enact similar regulations in further protecting their populations.
Generic template is progressing
Fifth — and in the long term, perhaps, most important — the technical team is making good progress on the Generic Insurance Template. It will enable developers to deliver smart contracts, as well as front-end and back-end applications. The idea is to create parametric insurance products easily and quickly!
The first implementation of the template is set to include predefined policy workflows, integration with different types of oracles (automated and manual), and product builders interfaces. The smart contract system will be managed by a number of microservices. As first steps, deployment and continuous delivery strategies were implemented. Plus, basic health monitoring and logging were also set up.
In parallel, the team is designing the product builders’ UX. The MVP of the Generic Insurance Template will be presented during a Workshop Day at the D1Conf.
D1Conf in Prague
Preparation for D1Conf in Prague is well under way. We’ve just confirmed the venue for the session day and pre-conference workshops. The event will take place in NODE5. In addition to speakers from Etherisc and HurricaneGuard, the program includes prominent players in the ecosystem, such as Casey Kuhlman of Monax, Jake Brukhman of CoinFund, Matt Tyndal of ConsenSys, Theo Freybote of tenSigma, Tobias Noack of Aon, and many others.
Here are some of the highlights of the planned agenda:
- Two panel discussions on such hot topics as insured cryptowallets and the quality of oracles in decentralized insurance
- Two workshops covering the ins-and-outs of launching a blockchain-based insurance product from both business and technical perspectives
- A series of talks devoted to decentralizing social security, business process modeling, DAOs as infrastructure, insurance risk tokenization, and other key aspects of the emerging decentralized insurance business
For a complete list of topics and speakers, please visit d1conf.com.
The sponsor list includes Etherisc, Nexus Mutual, Witnet, Protofire, and Asure.
D1Conf attendees can take advantage of Etherisc’s Flight Delay insurance promotion. Anyone going to the event can purchase a Flight Delay insurance policy starting from $1 by using the promo code “d1conf”. Simply choose your flight, insert a premium, apply the code, and get up to $1,700 in payouts in case of delays or cancellations.
We hope to see you there!
