The Middle East, especially the United Arab Emirates has been public with its special attention towards blockchain technology. The kingdom also encourages companies that set up their offices in the emirate to integrate blockchain tech in their services/products.
In order to address the challenge of reconciling motor recovery claims, a UAE-based company called XA Group has come up with the first “made in UAE” blockchain-based and end-to-end digital solution. They call it the ‘Addenda.’ Open access has been offered by the company to all Middle-east & North Africa (MENA) motor insurers. It will bring customers, repairers, brokers and insurers under the same hood.
The XA group is a well-known global automotive service provider (aftermarket). It has taken extra efforts to offer the Addenda in Arabic so that regional insurers in UAE can also integrate the service into their products.
A UAE-based news publishing house reports that Addenda has already been adopted by insurers like the Abu Dhabi National Insurance Company, Oriental Insurance Company, Yas Takaful, and Emirates Insurance Company. This proves that there is a great desire among industry participants for transparency and digitalization.
According to XA Group, Addenda delivers a live and shared view of policy data and documentation among insurers, enabling transparency into the tedious approval and reconciliation procedure that is involved with automobile recovery claims.
Mina Sahib, the group director for MENA at XA Group says that the company understands “the challenges insurers face and the major financial burden posed on them due to the heavily decentralized and paper-based nature of the reconciliation process.” Due to the current decentralized nature of insurance companies, it becomes difficult to “fully identify the reasons behind outstanding claims and therefore, they are not able to reconcile their financials with other insurers.”
Paul McLeod, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Emirates Insurance also agrees with the argument put forward by the XA Group. As per the COO, one of the biggest challenges faced by the industry is “exchanging recovery payments.” He says that Addenda is a “small step” towards working together in a “collaborative way.”