Nationwide, Securian, Cincinnati Financial, Institutes, Riskstream, blockchain,

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

The solution, developed by the Institute’s RiskStream Collaborative and these firms, helps verify the education requirements for insurance companies that sell life and annuity 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 the Canopy platform for core systems.

Securian was a founding member of RiskStream in 2018. “We joined the collaboration to learn more about Distributed Ledger Technology (e.g. blockchain), and to collaborate with other operators to solve 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) hands-on learning about how this technology is implemented.”

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Securian worked on the development of the institute’s mortality monitor and education verification for financial professionals. Mortality Monitor helps terminate and process death benefits and claims.

Nationwide and Cincinnati Insurance joined the consortium in recent years. Eric Henderson, president of Nationwide Annuity, wrote in a written response that the partnership positioned Nationwide “to help solve key business challenges in the risk management and insurance industries through product innovation, increased efficiency 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, reduce operational costs and improve 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 have enjoyed working with them on the claims, life, personal lines and surety industry working groups,” Brad Purnhagen of Cincinnati’s Strategic Innovation Group wrote in a response.

Purnhagen’s colleague, Major Bernhold, director of life marketing at the firm, said in a press release: “Education verification during licensing and contracting for life insurance personnel is an important but cumbersome manual process. There are a number of parties, including education providers, agents, carriers and distributors, who everyone seeks to share and confirm information.”

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