R3 Blockchain Consortium Sees American Insurance Giant MetLife Join Ranks
MetLife Inc., one of the largest insurers in the world has joined the R3-led blockchain consortium that now counts 60 of the world’s largest financial institutions.
Insurance giant MetLife is the latest financial institution to join the financial private blockchain consortium led by New York-based startup R3.
MetLife will partner and interact with other R3 members in an effort to explore the potential application of blockchain technology in the insurance industry. Specifically, how distributed ledgers can streamline activities such as business processing, policy administration, customer payments, new investments management and the distribution of proceeds, a statement revealed.
“R3’s work has proven how blockchain technology can disrupt how business is done today,” stated Marty Lippert, executive vice president and head of MetLife’s Global Technology and Operations.
He also stated that MetLife is the first multinational insurer and now the 60th member to join the global consortium.
Corda, the distributed ledger software platform developed by R3 in conjunction with its members will remain the shared private ledger used to record and transact financial agreements between approved members.
R3 CEO David Rutter spoke about the consortium’s growing membership which now sees an influx of non-banking institutions.
The addition of a major insurance player such as MetLife is testament to the growing interest in distributed ledger technology amongst the non-bank financial services community.
He further stated that R3 was leading the charge of the FinTech industry.
Our consortium is now one of the largest of its kind ever assembled in the financial technology space, with some of the world’s largest banks and financial institutions working together to deliver cutting-edge solutions that can be applied to the benefit of all end users and their clients.
Notably, MetLife isn’t the first insurer to join R3, with that distinction taken by Hong Kong-based life insurance group AIA. The pan-Asian life insurance group, which is also the largest publicly listed firm in the region, joined R3 in early June 2016.
The global network of R3 partners, which now includes MetLife Inc., will collaborate at the R3 Lab and Research Centre to work toward researching and fulfilling the potential of blockchain technology in the financial services industry.
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