About INSUREUM
Abstract
Despite the insurance industry’s success over the last 30 years, it has never been a technology
leader. Finally, with the Insuruem Protocol, the insurance value chain will become cost efficient
and simple, and create larger value in the insurance industry by enabling transactions between
stakeholders. Insurance companies, policyholders and 3rd parties alike can all make
transactions according to their own competencies, and all excess value (created from the
transactions) is shared based on their contribution.
Zikto started negotiations with insurance and financial institutions in 2015, concerning the
gathering and processing of lifecycle data. It was these new connections that led Zikto down the
path toward changing their focus as a company.
The Zikto team realized that a lot of players in traditional finance-based sectors have a strong
initiative to understand their current and potential customers. A data-gathering intermediary can
be a real asset for these sectors to understand their target audiences. With reliable data, they
can develop better products that are customized, digitalized and more cost-efficient.
However, it is very difficult and costly for these sectors to gather this data by themselves. It
requires a significant investment of time and money to develop and integrate such a system,
market it to the public, manage the data gathering processes, and analyze it. The Challenge,
Zikto’s data integration platform, bridged the gap nicely by providing data and analysis gathered
from various smart devices. Zikto secured a number of sales agreements and ongoing
negotiations with global insurance companies, as The Challenge offered a good value-for-price.
As just one of millions of app developers, Zikto ultimately decided to side with the win-win
monetization strategy of adjusting their focus to the processing and integration of data.
Now, Zikto is expanding the idea of data sharing to another level: developing a protocol to
facilitate the transactions. It will promote more stakeholders in the traditional insurance industry,
benefiting all. Insurers will find easier ways to gather data, users and policyholders will have
access to better insurance products, and third parties like app developers and sales agencies
will find optimal ways to monetize their services and products.
The Insureum Protocol is a new blockchain-based insurance ecosystem that seeks to connect
insurers, their customers, and developers. It is designed to assist insurance companies in
tailoring insurance policies to individual lifestyles to provide unique incentives for customers.
Zikto’s vision is for the Insureum Protocol to create the conditions through which many new
insurance products attractive to people under the age of forty are developed.
Features
The Insureum Protocol bridges the technology gap between the insurance industry, 3rd party
developers (Applications & IoT), and policyholders.
Unlike manually managed value chains, the Insureum Protocol uses blockchain technology to
create a decentralized ecosystem which connects insurers, their policyholders, and third-party
developers, and seeks to provide access to a plethora of individually anonymous, but
demographically identifiable data. The premium paid will enrich the total value creation of the
industry. Furthermore, the created value is shared based on each stakeholder’s contribution.
In recent years, adjacent industries (finance and healthcare) have been seeking new ways to
access customer data. In the insurance industry, IoT, wearables and other smart technology can
give highly relevant information about customers to insurance companies that can help them
tailor-make plans and create insurance products which appeal to potential customers.
For example; GPS and telematics tracking can inform insurance companies how fast someone
drives, or suggest that a driver who regularly drives for long periods should schedule more
breaks. Other technologies may track how often they go rock climbing, cycling, etc. Insurance
companies could also determine the amount of steps taken during a normal day as one
measure of health.
Within the Insurem protocol ecosystem, insurers, their policyholders and third party developers
can exchange blockchain-based tokens called Insureum to buy and sell anonymized data.
Insurers will receive the data they want and have the opportunity to develop totally new or even
better types of insurance products, especially for usage-based insurance segmentation.
Developers are incentivized to connect apps to the Insureum Protocol to receive Insureum, and
policyholders are rewarded for sharing their anonymized data.
The value of the Insureum Protocol is described below. The value to any particular stakeholder
may vary depending on the future development of the Insureum Protocol and other factors.
However, Zikto plans to ensure the main idea of Insureum-incentivised data-sharing will be
actualized in the following ways during the first stage.
2.1. Policyholders
The Insureum Protocol gives policyholders more power to choose plans that perfectly match
their lifestyles by providing insurers with diversified data, even though such plans will not be
purchasable through Zikto or marketed via the Insureum Protocol, at least at the initial stage.
However, we have plans to serve as a free marketplace for insurance products in the future
after acquiring the proper regulatory licence. When policyholders choose to share data, they are
rewarded by being able to trade and earn cryptocurrency (Insureum). They could, at a later
stage, perhaps also save time and effort when making claims, as most of the processes would
be automated by utilizing smart contracts on the blockchain.
By its fit-for-all nature, consumer insurance products cannot meet the needs of the various
individual policyholders. With the Insureum Protocol, policyholders will be able to purchase
customized insurance products such as (for example) pet insurance, car insurance only for
long-distance driving, real estate insurance only during the holiday season, cybersecurity
insurance and others for a more reasonable price. Secondly, the data that they currently share
for free will be made more valuable. Data users (insurers and other third parties) will reward the
policyholders (and other data providers like app users) for the data with Insureum. Considering
that there is currently almost no reward for the data, this will dramatically impact perspectives on
the value of the data.
Imagine an insurance policy that rewards you if you hit metric goals like walking 10,000 steps
per day. Or if you’re a safe driver and don’t slam your brakes in traffic, you’ll be entitled to a
discount.
2.2. Insurance companies
Insurance companies will be able to create mini ecosystems that contain in-house or third-party
apps that accurately gather and analyze the real data of (potential) policyholders. Within these
ecosystems, cryptocurrency is exchanged between developers and insurance companies, and
can be used to buy and sell anonymized data to develop and manage customized product
offerings.
Being able to identify fraud by cross-referencing transactions on the blockchain could also help
insurance companies to save time and money when it comes to underwriting and the claims
process.
2.3. Developers
Currently, many of the apps that gather user data via IoT devices don’t appear to have proper
business models through which they may easily and quickly monetize this data. Using Insureum
and The Insureum Protocol, app and API developers may be able to create and maintain a
variety of new programs based on requests from insurers. The Insureum Protocol could be used
by both insurance companies and developers to exchange apps and/or data in a turnkey
ecosystem, with limited difficulty and costs due to transactional or trust issues, as all
transactions will be based on Insureum and on a blockchain.
Technical Info
https://github.com/TeamZikto/Contract
INSUREUM Roadmap
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2017.4.1
- Launch of ‘The Challenge’ (Integrated step count platform for wearable devices and
smartphones)
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2017. 5. 1
- Operation of blockchain-related pilot project with SK Telecom, CoinPlug, Daily
Intelligence (ICON)
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2017. 6. 1
- 5-year contract to provide step count data to KB Kookmin Card
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2017. 10. 16
- Completion of first draft of the white paper
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2018. 5.30 Pre-Sale
- ICO
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2018. 3Q
- Pilot test Insureum using ‘The Challenge’
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2018. 4Q
- Deploy MVP for Insureum protocol interface to gather usage data globally
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2019. 2Q
- Launch Insureum Platform (phase 0) and implement strategies to gather main
players (insurance companies, users, 3rd parties)
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2019. 4Q
- Start Phase 1, focus marketing on DApp developers, distribute smart contract
templates
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2020
- Start Phase 2, focus marketing on sales agency (GA), develop optimal sales commission
scheme
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2020 3Q
- Start Phase 3, focus marketing on inspectors, connect to IoT devices
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2021
- Pilot test underwriting automation, start discussion on Insureum Protocol expansion