MARINE HULL INSURANCE USING PRIVATE BLOCKCHAIN, FILECOIN PROTOCOL AND SMART CONTRACTS

Abstract

Marine transportation is the oldest means of transportation, which is the most useful when the goods to be shipped are in bulk. Travelling through sea means there is high chance of mishapping even when safety regulations are in place, which could result in damage or loss of the ship or the shipments. Thus, Marine insurance is advisable as it covers the hull, cargo, freight and marine liabilities. Any losses or damages sustained during a marine journey must be settled as early as possible through Insurance. The process of declaring and claiming Insurance involves a lot of documentation, which is collected and stored in paper format, and third-party participation. In modern times, there has been a shift towards Digitization in every sector, which means everything is stored in a digital format. One of the key developments in Digitization has been the use of Blockchain technologies which support distributed ledgers, smart contracts, smart properties, storage, etc. Applications, in which there is involvement of money or assets, are reliant on blockchain because of the security, by encryption of data, and performance provided by it. In this paper, we have discussed the challenges and key issues associated with the declaration and claiming of Marine Hull Insurance through the existing system. To resolve these issues, we combine three of the latest technologies in Blockchain, namingly, Private Blockchain, Filecoin Protocol and Smart Contracts. Our proposed system is based on a digital platform, where all documents can be commonly accessed and third-party involvements are removed, resulting in simpler, faster and easier declaration and claiming of marine hull insurances that removes the complications in the present general procedure.