People, Risk & Uncertainty Over Time: How Might Blockchain Technology Transform Personal Insurance

People, Risk & Uncertainty Over Time: How Might Blockchain Technology Transform Personal Insurance
Workshop

Blockchain technology lies at the heart of the Bitcoin protocol and that of other cryptocurrencies. It is a publicly accessible ledger of every Bitcoin transaction that has ever occurred. This ledger is decentralized and accessible to every node connected to the Bitcoin network. To add to the blockchain, users called ‘miners’ examine all incoming transactions, creating a new block out of the valid transactions. Each new block also includes a reference to the previous block, linking the two together, and so the chain grows. The blockchain makes it extremely hard if not impossible for previous transactions to be altered or fake transactions to be accepted. Though everyone can see the history of all transactions, the parties involved in each transaction are only referred to by their public, disposable addresses, so their identities are kept secret.Organised as part of a research project, this Long Finance workshop aims to start a discussion on how blockchain technology works and what would be the implications of applying blockchain technology to personal insurance, particularly in terms of interactions between clients and insurance companies, transactions through time, risk information, identity and personal history management.