ZhongAn Tech (China) wants to use blockchain technology in order to reduce costs and risks in the healthcare industry, according to South China Morning Post. ZhongAn is a technology incubator ran by ZhongAn Online Property & Casualty Insurance. It appeared in 2013 and was founded by Alibaba Group chairman, Jack Ma, PingAn Insurance chairman, Peter Ma Mingzhe and Tencent Holdings chairman, Pony Ma Huateng.
In the past, Jack Ma did refer to the potential that blockchain has to address security issues and privacy problems in literally all industries, even if he did add that in his belief Bitcoin is just a bubble.
Chen Wei, ZhongAn Online unit chief, said that blockchain tech plays a very important role in changing the insurance field in China. He noted that ZhongAn already utilizes blockchain tech in order to store the ZhongAn Online insurance policies. His exact words were:
“Insurance is backed by statistics and blockchain will help to connect that massive and varied data. It will be used to manage risk and improve pricing.”
What should be known is that blockchain technology was already used in health insurance because it offers effective information distribution between involved parties, brand new ways to fight counterfeit drugs production and research driven anonymous data pools. Chen went on to add:
“Insurance sales used to rely on agents and individual sales people, however younger generations prefer making online purchases. Insurance clients no longer need to file paper documents as proof, instead they can just say when and which hospital they attended.”
South China Morning Post added that China is now interested in blockchain tech use and included it in the Five-Year-Plan it now uses, a plan that lays out the country’s development plans between 2016 and 2020. Xi Jinping, China’s president, praised blockchain tech during a speech held at Chinese Academy of Sciences. He noted that blockchain is a big part of a brand new technological revolution.
Officially, the Chines government showed highly bullish attitude towards the use of blockchain technology. The government is basically not welcoming cryptocurrencies. There is an official ban in place on ICOs, a ban of services that are “exchange-like” and a ban on foreign exchanges.