Blockchain technology key to ILS innovation

Following Northern Trust's development of the technology for private equity fund administration earlier this year, Guernsey-domiciled ILS reinsurance transformer Dom Re IC Ltd has issued what it is claiming to be the first notes ever digitised on a private blockchain.

Referred to as the ILSBlockchain, the mechanism has replaced the role of a traditional settlement system for this note issue.

The industry would traditionally use clearing houses such as Euroclear, which verifies information supplied by brokers in a securities transaction and the settlement of securities.

Cedric Edmonds, director of Solidum Re, parent of Dom Re IC, had the idea to use a blockchain and was key in the design and implementation of the ILS blockchain solution and its surrounding structural mechanics.

He said it was becoming increasingly difficult to access Euroclear efficiently for smaller private placement note issues.

'It was a case of necessity being the mother of invention,' he said.

'Without the excellent support and flexibility of the service providers in Guernsey, most notably Artex, who picked up the baton at a late stage from another service provider and then ran amazingly swiftly with it, completing this would not have been possible – my thanks go out to them.'