Problem With Current Insurance Industry that Makes Insurance Boring
Whenever I used to hear about term ‘Insurance’, a picture of 60 yrs. old guy with his glasses on, completely involved with pile of papers, checking them all out, used to flash in my mind. Even after having that picture in my mind, I couldn’t figure out what exactly he was doing and how this kind of things work?
This was during my teenage, and I thought if I can’t understand this, it must be some serious industry that takes a lot of man hours.
My first exposure to Bitcoin was during 2010, when I read news article that Bitcoin is the new digital currency. Younger me, fascinated by internet thought that all these internet stuff is so cool. Little I had any idea about how this Bitcoin is gonna come into my life as a long lasting relationship (yeah, still we are committed).
My story with insurance comes from a small incident that took place with me. About 1.5 years ago, my motorcycle got stolen from my house. My Dad was like, ‘Yeah it’s bad, but anyway it was insured.’
It took more than 3 months to get our insurance money back, with an insurance agent visiting my home 3 times, multiple rounds of paperwork and some rounds of police station as well. We thought everything was going right and then, the guy who stole our motorcycle, killed a woman with the same.
By the time we were done with all paperwork, legal work, police work etc we were so exhausted that as soon we got our insurance money (after like 8 months), we repaired the motorcycle and sold it back in a much cheaper price. This selling stunt was just came out of frustration.
Now, I will leave you with thought that what if some smart governance was there, what if police FIR, medical record of that woman, manufacture and purchase data of motorcycle, identity of thieves and people involved in the case etc were on Blockchain.
Issues that arises with this old fashioned process are
- Claim processing speed — 8 months.
- Lack of automation- Yeah, we were writing postal cards to insurance providers to give them physical proof of police reports.
- No transparency- Clearly had no idea why it’s taking too long.
- High costs- (Insured amount- (Insurance cost+Multiple rounds of Police and Court))= Much less than we expected.
