MetLife Asia’s Singapore-based innovation centre, LumenLab, has begun testing a new insurance solution that uses blockchain technology to trigger automatic payouts upon diagnosis of certain health conditions, without the need to make a claim.
The experimental product, called Vitana, is currently designed to offer pregnant women financial protection in case of gestational diabetes, a condition that affects up to one in five expectant mothers in Singapore.
MetLife said it engaged Swiss Re to help drive product design and reinsure the risk, while Cognizant provided underlying technology and blockchain expertise and electronic medical records provider Vault Dragon supported on-the-ground implementation.
Vitana securely connects to customers’ electronic medical records via their mobile devices to issue a policy within minutes, and performs parametric underwriting so that the insurance company doesn’t require access to the underlying medical data to confirm insurability.
“Vitana embodies MetLife’s commitment to its customers. In today’s world, people expect experiences to be simple, automated, and digital,” said Zia Zaman, MetLife’s Chief Innovation Officer in Asia and Chief Executive Officer of LumenLab.
“We saw an opportunity to test how blockchain can make insurance more seamless and we’ve partnered with some of the best companies in their fields to create a blueprint to launch new parametric insurance products in the future.”
MetLife added that the product was developed within the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) regulatory sandbox, and was highlighted by MAS as one of the key innovations to come out of the initiative.
“Experimentation is crucial to invent and create the future,” said Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer, MAS. “We are glad that the sandbox has enabled LumenLab to jumpstart an innovative experiment within safe boundaries, to understand if it could effectively address existing pain points of both the insured and insurer, before rolling it out on a broader scale.”
