# Blockchain and Smart Contracts for Insurance: Is the Technology Nature Enough?
## 5 Conclusions  
Blockchain is receiving an ever-growing attention from research and industry, and is considered a breakthrough technology. The increasing enthusiasm reported in the media, however, could bias an objective evaluation about whether to invest or not in this technology. The risk is that a company decides to embrace blockchain technology because it is fascinating, without reflecting on whether it is mature enough for an adoption in everyday activities, and by a wider public. To help companies reduce the risk of chasing decentralization for the sake of itself just because blockchain is now under the spotlight, in this paper we presented an overview of potential applications and use cases of blockchain and smart contracts in the insurance sector. We also drafted a more general SWOT analysis of blockchain, which could be potentially applied to a variety of other sectors. We decided to focus on insurance because this is a sector where blockchain has not been fully explored yet and in which blockchain could have a relevant impact on several processes and application scenarios. Hence, use cases in this sector could be helpful in identifying advantages and disadvantages of the technology itself. The considerations made throughout the paper helped us answer the key questions reported in the introduction. Concerning question 1, \"Are there clear use cases exploiting blockchain technology and smart contracts in the insurance sector?\", at the present time a number of use cases and prototype solutions have been devised in this sector. In particular, blockchain and smart contracts could be successfully used to speed up claims processing and reduce operating costs. In this scenario, a smart contract could trigger reimbursements based on data acquired from physical sensors (e.g., damp sensors installed on roofs) or from the Web (e.g., weather or flights delay data). In another scenario, data entry/identity verification, the blockchain could be used as the infrastructure to verify a person's identity. People's identities could be linked to a blockchain address; then, each time a person needs to be verified (e.g., to open a bank account), he/she could send a signed transaction from his/her address, by proving he/she is the address' owner. In the context of premium computation/risk assessment/frauds prevention, the blockchain could act as a shared ledger recording a person's previous history (previous claims, committed infractions, medical history, etc.). Insurance companies could rely on these data to identify frauds, or to automatically compute the premium of a policy. In the scenario of pay-per-use/micro-insurance, blockchain and smart contracts could be used to automatically activate/deactivate policies and covers, based on data collected by sensors. Finally, in the last identified scenario, i.e., peer-to-peer insurance, blockchain and smart contracts could be the key technologies to enable a shift to a full decentralization, e.g., supporting the automatic management of self-insured groups' funds. Concerning question 2, \"In case we want to adopt a blockchain, what is the most suitable blockchain architecture for our needs?\", as presented in Section 3, the architectural solutions should be chosen based on the company's decentralization needs. In general, for the backend a private blockchain may be sufficient. Private blockchains have been frequently demonized, since using an instrument originally born to foster decentralization in a fully centralized environment may seem a contradiction. Nonetheless, they have the advantage of keeping track of the sender of a transaction and of all the previous occurred transactions, reducing the risk of data tampering. Furthermore, together with smart contracts, they could be used to increase the automatization of existing tasks. In case multiple institutions need to access data, a consortium blockchain may be preferable. This blockchain could be maintained by nodes belonging to the different institutions of the consortium, and could be used as a shared ledger.