Nationwide, Securian, CinFin honored for blockchain

The Institutes, a non-profit risk management and insurance educational group, through its RiskStream Collaborative blockchain consortium for developing insurance applications, has recognized The Cincinnati Insurance Companies, Nationwide and Securian Financial for their support of a project for educational verification of product sales. For their efforts, RiskStream honored the firms with its Collaborative 2022 Collaborator Award.

The solution developed by the Institutes’ RiskStream Collaborative and these firms helps verify what the educational requirements are for insurers selling life and annuities products. Together, their solution includes a new industry-wide workflow for educational courses using NFTs. RiskStream implemented the solution with Kaleido, a development partner, and on its Canopy platform for core systems of record.

Securian was a founding member of RiskStream in 2018. “We joined the collaborative to learn more about Distributed Ledger Technology (e.g., blockchain), and to work with other carriers to solve shared common problems in the insurance industry,” Brian Oberman, director of engineering for Securian’s NextGen Lab, said in a written response to questions from Digital Insurance. “The benefits to date are: (1) a better understanding of Distributed Ledger Technology; (2) a better understanding of the challenges we all face; (3) practical learnings on how to implement this technology.”

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Securian worked on development of the Institute’s Mortality Monitor and Education Verification for Financial Professionals. Mortality Monitor helps close out and process death benefits and claims.

Nationwide and Cincinnati Insurance joined the consortium in recent years. Eric Henderson, president of Nationwide Annuity, in a written response, wrote that the partnership positioned Nationwide “to help solve key business challenges in the risk management and insurance industry through product innovation, increased efficiencies and new technology.” Henderson added, “These collaborative projects can make a big difference as we learn more about future trends and technologies, helping to streamline data flow and verification, lowering operating costs and enhancing the customer experience.”

Nationwide, which joined RiskStream in 2019, also contributed to the consortium’s work on a blockchain proof of insurance verification tool. Cincinnati Insurance joined in 2021 after following the Institutes’ work for years. “We’ve enjoyed collaborating with them in the Claims, Life, Personal Lines and Surety industry working groups,” wrote Brad Purnhagen of Cincinnati’s Strategic Innovation Group, in a response.

Purnhagen’s colleague, Major Bernhold, life marketing director at the firm, said in a press release, “Education verification during licensing and appointments for life insurance professionals is an important but cumbersome mnual process. There are a variety of parties, including educational providers, agents, carriers, and distributors, all seeking to share and verify information.”

Securian’s Oberman said in a press release, “Our collaboration on licensing, appointments and education provides a steppingstone to greater efficiencies in advisory services. We are very excited to see where this could lead.”