Coforge and InsurNode drive insurance innovation and CX with blockchain

We don’t typically associate the insurance industry with innovation. Conversations have historically centered around carriers’ legacy technology and decades of technical and process debt, but that’s set to change. Insurers are looking to embed innovation through their organizations to drive new efficiencies, and smart insurers are also placing customer experiences (CX) at the core of everything they do. Exhibit 1 shows that changing consumer expectations is a top-three concern for leading insurers.

Recognizing insurers’ growing appetite for innovation, Coforge partnered with InsurNode to develop an on-demand insurance platform that leverages blockchain. If you’re responsible for driving innovation and CX within an insurance or broker business, note how emerging technologies like blockchain can deliver for your organization.

Exhibit 1: Changing consumer expectations are a top-three concern for leading insurance executives

Sample: HFS Pulse H1 2023; n= 96 Global 2000 insurance leaders
Source: HFS Research, 2023

InsurNode aims to deliver a one-stop shop for insurance products—powered by blockchain

Coforge recognized that shifting consumer demographics meant insurers wanted to invest in innovation focused on meeting new CX goals. It partnered with InsurNode in 2022 as a result. Offered as a service, InsurNode is a new insurance product and administration platform leveraging blockchain to enable on-demand insurance. InsurNode believes this will allow carriers to cater to younger audiences and suit the often short-term, limited-time needs of those working in the gig economy. The platform, co-developed with Coforge, will be available on the wider market. The soon-to-launch Swinz is the first live offering built on InsurNode.

The gig economy exploded globally as individuals sought casual work to fit around their lifestyles or supplement their main income streams. It was a $355 billion market in 2021 and is predicted to rise to $873 billion by 2028. However, traditional insurance products are not fit for purpose. For example, gig work is, by definition, flexible, while insurance products typically require annual contracts and monthly payments. Further, given that many gig economy workers aren’t covered by an employer’s insurance, they are left to source and pay multiple policies themselves. For insurers, Coforge believes the InsurNode platform will arm the industry with the tools to cater to this growing market and the expanding consumer market demanding increasingly flexible products.

InsurNode’s secret sauce for delivering on-demand insurance is decentralized—blockchain

If you glance under the hood, you’ll see InsurNode is built on Hyperledger Fabric, a private blockchain. InsurNode and Coforge believe this is the platform’s secret sauce. By leveraging blockchain-backed smart contracts to provide policy structure, InsurNode can execute business logic on the blockchain, removing the manual paper-based processes typically required for policy adjustments. Smart contracts enable near-instant policy adjustments, allowing consumers to amend their coverage instantly, and near-instant adjustments are natively designed at the core of the offering.

For insurers and brokers, the benefits extend beyond simply driving CX. The blockchain-fueled process reduces administrative and operating costs, and the digital-native platform isn’t shackled by the decades of technical and process debt facing incumbent carriers, enabling product development and management in days rather than months. Further, blockchain delivers transparency and immutability, ensuring all ecosystem stakeholders have the latest verifiable information readily available. Finally, it’s important to note that private data is stored off-chain, and most of the information on and off chain is combined and made available in a data lake. All of this means InsurNode is regulatory compliant, and a complete audit trail of transactions can be provided as required.

The Bottom Line: The InsurNode platform is just one example of how insurers and brokers can deliver improved CX with emerging technologies.

Disruptive insuretechs continue to threaten incumbent operators, spanning brokers to the insurers themselves. Changing customer demographics means insurers and brokers must turn to innovation to compete. The InsurNode platform illustrates how leveraging emerging technologies can deliver new customer experiences while driving down operating costs for insurers and brokers alike, but it won’t come easy. Adopting InsurNode will require entirely new behaviors from insurers and brokers as everything becomes real-time and transparent—a far cry from their typical siloed and slow processes. However, if stakeholders buy in across the ecosystem, it could become a significant driver for change.