In Singapore, Metlife’s LumenLab showcased a demo of Vitana – a new parametric insurance app that aims to be Singapore’s first gestational diabetes protection for expectant mothers. Vitana wants to reduce both the friction in the customer experience and complexity of back office operations through a blockchain-enabled insurance app, one that automatically settles claims from policy holders who are diagnosed with gestational diabetes. The app is in pilot phase and is heavily based on blockchain technology.
The app aims to tackle a prevalent problem whereby policy holders personally pay for needless medical care and later claim it back from the insurer.
Vitana currently involves five co-operating parties: MetLife, re-insurer Swiss Re, systems integrator Cognizant, Vault Dragon, and the Singaporean regulator.
How it works
- Uses data provided by the electronic medical provider to enable underwriting and policy issuance on the mobile phone.
- Posts policies on the app using a blockchain backend to automatically trigger a payout and eliminate claims with secure and timely exchanges of consistent transaction records among key stakeholders
Vault Dragon, an Asian Electronic Medical Record provider, is a partner in this venture to help OB-GYN clinics to digitize. Given the insurance policy is parametric, the OB-GYN just needs to provide the data to confirm a patient has gestational diabetes at which point the claim is immediately paid.
Swiss Re Senior Vice President JJ Carroll has said of the benefits of automated payouts “It’s creating that confidence between the customer and the insurer. The transparency and the knowledge creates a much better experience for the customer.”
Ultimately, this initiative from MetLife is a good example of the operational efficiencies that can be achieved from the application of smart contracts and Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) to automate underwriting and the settlement of simple claims.