Applications of Blockchain in the Automotive Insurance Industry. A Model Development from the Perspective of the Service Provider Sector

Master's Thesis from the year 2018 in the subject Economics - International Economic Relations, Cologne Business School Köln, language: English, abstract: This research has been gathered together with the collaboration of Control Expert Company, a German company dedicated to providing services to the core business of the automotive insurance industry. This research is mainly focused on the different applications that Blockchain technology offers the automotive insurance industry. Based on these applications, a process model is developed from the perspective of the service provider sector of the automotive insurance. Having the main focus in mind, this research will answer the following question: How does Blockchain technology benefit the Automotive Insurance Process? The structure of this research will lead the reader through the evolution of the Blockchain technology and its features. First, a full definition of the technology will be explained. This will be followed by the generations of Blockchain and its classification. After that some history on regards Blockchain and the digital era will be mentioned. Such as the main innovations of the digital era, the creators of the technologies involved in Blockchain, and the main innovations within Blockchain. As the Internet of Things has become more and more popular during the last years, it is not possible to ignore the huge impact that it is having on people's daily lives. IoT represents a network of devices such as sensors, vehicles, computers and more, which interact among themselves and exchange information. Here comes a very interesting subcategory of the IoT - The Internet of People. The Internet of People describes the exchange of data through different devices but related to the people, or, in other words, the information gathered comes strictly from people. From this idea, the Internet of Money rises describing mainly how Blockchain and Bitcoin are changing the financial system. This is based on the idea of recording transactions in a safer way within a more decentralized system. Due to the strong disruption of Blockchain within different industries and the usability of the technology, it has been considered as an extra layer working over the internet. This is a new tier that enables transactions on a different level; permitting storage and record of data in a different way than a conventional database.