Piprate
On the back of the release of its first commercial proof of concept, Piprate CEO Stan Nazarenko talks about the important potential of blockchain in the captive and reinsurance space
What is Piprate?
Piprate is a Dublin-based insurtech company. We solve the insurance industry’s fundamental data sharing problems in a way that creates trust, accountability, and transparency. We do this by providing blockchain-backed data wallets and application programming interfaces (APIs) to enable secure transfer and complete data traceability between business partners. A data wallet is basically a full list of data artefacts the company possesses. Our solution makes insurance data sharing more secure and efficient.
We have recently completed our first commercial proof of concept (PoC) with leading reinsurance players RenaissanceRe and TigerRisk, providing secure exposure management and exchange capability.
The main focus of the PoC was to streamline the process of exchanging the deal exposure data between a reinsurance broker and a reinsurer and confirm the suitability of a distributed ledger backed solution for this use case.
What are the main advantages of your platform?
It almost doesn’t matter where we are on the insurance value chain, we still see it is a widespread practice to use a combination of spreadsheets, file shares and emails to transfer data. It’s insecure and incredibly inefficient at times. Our platform provides an instant and secure way to share data, which retains full provenance of the data so that at any point in time, any party involved can confirm where the data came from and what kind of permissions they have to use the data.
As a result, the parties won’t have to repeat the same amount of validation and verification, reducing unnecessary duplication of efforts across the industry. By having the most accurate and trusted data at their fingertips, we enable insurance professionals to spend less time and money sharing data, and more time analysing it and writing business.
Is the platform directly transferable into the captive insurance industry?
I believe it is very relevant to captive insurance. More than that, captive insurance is an attractive case for using blockchain solutions because in a typical captive setup, interests of all the parties are more aligned and the relationship is very heavily process driven.
Therefore, we can gain efficiencies much faster than in a general insurance company use case. If we consider the way data flows in a captive business, it takes time to capture the relevant information, collate it and pass it over to the insurance value chain, and the regulator.
By adding trust and transparency, we can streamline both underwriting and risk transfer processes and ensure that all the parties have access to the most detailed and up-to-date information about the underlying risk at all times. This is where we make a difference. At Piprate, we go one step beyond providing a capability to share data. By using our proprietary technology, we connect the client’s internal data with providers of third-party data, analytics and insights.
Ultimately, we facilitate building the most comprehensive view of risk and bring it closer to capital.
When will we properly start to see the impact of blockchain in the captive industry?
This year has been a turning point for blockchain in insurance. We have seen announcements about Insurwave, and big progress has been made by other companies in the field. In 2019, we will leverage on that success and see more and more real implementation of blockchain in the captive space.
Do you think blockchain-backed platforms are going to become an integral part of the industry, making the current methods for transferring data look very outdated?
I think this way of capturing and packaging data through the value chain is going to be transformative for the industry. As we have seen in the past, once a couple of major players adopt this mechanism, the others will follow reasonably quickly.
Has Piprate got any movements into the captive space planned?
Yes, we do indeed. We are currently working with a partner in the captive space. I can’t disclose many details just yet but watch this space in the second quarter of 2019. We are hoping to go public with all the information then.
I know you are close with Strategic Risk Solutions and Stuart King, have you got anything planned with them in the captive space?
I know Stuart King very well and we have regular conversations about our shared passion, the role of blockchain in insurance. I think there may be opportunities in the future.
There seems to be an emerging hub of insurtech in Dublin, why do you think that is?
I believe one of the major drivers is Brexit, and the second one is the availability of highly skilled technical talent. We are observing an influx of insurance businesses to Ireland, with a heightened appetite for innovation and partnerships with insurtech companies. The number of indigenous insurtech startups is growing and there have been conversations about creating our own acceleration programme for insurtech, and maybe more than one. I believe this will happen soon. It has been a very positive development for the country and I can only see it growing in the next couple of years.
