Galileo Platforms has become the first company to have its advanced blockchain platform used by an insurer as its core policy administration system with Singlife’s launch in the Philippines.
The Hong Kong-based company has joined with Singlife Philippines, a mobile-first life insurer from Singapore, and GCash, the largest e-wallet in the Philippines, to launch a platform for life insurance products. By using Galileo’s scalable cloud-based blockchain technology, the new Singlife Philippines service can potentially reach a very large and mostly untapped insurance market.
Making insurance more affordable
The new blockchain-driven service is important because it will make affordable insurance available in one of the region’s most under-insured countries. It does so at a time of growing concern in the Philippines about COVID-19 and rising demand for health insurance.
“We are very pleased to partner with Galileo Platforms to launch this radically new digital service to an important yet under-insured market in the Philippines,” said Singlife Philippines President and CEO Rien Hermans in a press statement.
“Galileo technology is built for digital and for scale, offering easy low-cost solutions. That’s perfect for Singlife and perfect for under-insured markets such as this one,” he said.
Galileo Platforms’ patented blockchain technology enables insurers to connect with customers, distributors, and other key players in real-time using its digital platform, providing a shared source of truth to the industry participants, and eliminating the duplication of data. It provides a low-cost platform and flexible insurance products well suited for the Philippines, where insurance penetration is among the lowest in the region — less than 1 percent when measured by gross written premiums as a percentage of per-capita Gross Domestic Product.
Going digital
“Many insurers are struggling to become digital, constrained by legacy processes and systems. We’ve re-thought the approach to managing policies, coverage and premiums to create flexible products and straight through processing giving the customer a complete digital experience,” said Galileo Platforms CEO Mark Wales.
“Our low-cost high-efficiency technology enables the whole life cycle of insurance transactions to be completed at scale, without touching human hands.
“With Galileo, new business quotes, pricing, digital policy issuance, commissions and claims are completed in real-time with a single, secure ‘source of truth’ that is agreed by all parties. It’s an immutable point of reference that replaces the need for multiple copies of transactions, customer, and policy records,” he said.
Galileo Platforms supports all types of retail insurance — medical, life, and general. Its technology helps insurers and customers by removing the need for reconciliations and slow back-office processes, thereby reducing cost, complexity, and errors. Its vision is to make insurance more widely available to the mass of under-insured people across Asia.
“Two or three years ago, the idea of smallholder farmers in remote corners of the Philippines taking out insurance through blockchain technology would have seemed fanciful. But that is the reality now,” Wales said.
He added that medical insurance is usually one of the first types of insurance consumers buy.
“Our digital technology makes insurance accessible and affordable for the mass market. What works on mobile phones across the Philippines can be replicated elsewhere in Asia and globally,” he said.
