Life insurance, with its extensive recordkeeping and detailed terms, stands out among financial services as particularly well-suited for blockchain applications, according to Provenance Blockchain Labs.
Provenance Blockchain Labs is developing software infrastructure products that enable asset issuers and servicers to transact on the Provenance blockchain — a platform specifically designed for financial services.
Anything that is cheaper and faster and safer in financial services will eventually win because it’s just better. The technology, he added, helps increase revenues, reduce administrative costs, and improve record accuracy.
Anthony Moro, who leads Provenance Blockchain Labs
So far, blockchain’s most significant adoption has occurred in the home equity line of credit (HELOC) sector, which Moro noted shares operational similarities with life insurance due to its paperwork-heavy and multi-step processes.
Provenance has worked closely with Figure, a company offering HELOC loans entirely processed on blockchain, as well as Infineo, which applies similar technology in the insurance space.
Infineo migrates life insurance policies from “real-world assets” to the Provenance blockchain. It has minted $621.7 mn in life insurance policies onto the chain.
For context, in September 2024 Infineo reported minting $100 mn in policies within three months, and by June 2024 it had tokenized $9.4 mn in policies using Provenance.
Infineo also executed what it described as the first tokenized life insurance policy on a distributed ledger.
Moro sees parallels between HELOCs and life insurance in the number of steps required — from credit reports and appraisals to notarized sessions and physical signatures.
Blockchain, he explained, can streamline these processes through tokenization, which substitutes non-sensitive identifiers (tokens) for the original data and records assets on-chain as nonfungible tokens (NFTs).
Assets are placed in a secure database where each document is converted into a 256-character hash. The asset is then represented on-chain as an NFT, with the hash embedded in its metadata.
For example, a notary video session conducted for a HELOC transaction can be embedded in the NFT data for future access, eliminating the need for traditional record warehousing or audits.
Moro stated that while blockchain is often associated with cryptocurrencies like bitcoin or ethereum, its real potential lies in serving as a secure repository for a wide range of real-world assets.
This capability, he said, can improve efficiency and security not just in HELOCs but also in life insurance.
