LIMRA announced Aug. 7 that it has formed an advisory council to explore opportunities for improving operations and efficiencies in the life insurance and retirement sectors through the use of blockchain technology.

“Our role as a trade association is to provide a forum for industry discussion and collaboration on emerging trends,” said Robert Kerzner, president and CEO, LIMRA, LOMA, LL Global. “Blockchain technology offers our members significant ways to immediately improve operations and efficiencies. We are encouraged that many of our members have joined LIMRA’s Blockchain Advisory Council to help us find scalable solutions using this technology.”

Distributed ledger technology

Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that provides a secure, legal record of a transaction on a decentralized network that could be used in the financial services industry to lower administrative and claims processing costs, expand access to underserved markets and enable immediate issue products, says LIMRA.

LIMRA’s Blockchain Advisory Council will hold its inaugural meeting on Sept. 7 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Members of the Council include representatives from AXA, John Hancock, Lincoln Financial Group, MassMutual, Nationwide, Northwestern Mutual, Pacific Life Insurance Company, Penn Mutual and Principal Financial Group.

Collaborative industry solutions

LIMRA says it will work with the advisory council “to identify and prioritize concepts for practical collaborative industry solutions that could be developed and implemented within 18 months.”

“Blockchain has the capacity to revolutionize the financial services industry,” says the association’s announcement.