IMA Financial Unveils the Metaverse’s First Insurance Research & Development Facility
Financial services firm IMA Financial Group said it has launched the metaverse’s first insurance and risk management research and development facility. Called IMA Web3Labs, it will be located in Decentraland, a virtual world based on blockchain technology.
Funded by IMA’s investment arm, IMA Investments Inc., Web3Labs allows for exploring, testing and bringing to market risk and insurance strategies specific to the metaverse.
“Web3Labs allows us to explore the risks associated with digital and meta assets from within the metaverse, so we can better prepare our clients to manage such risks. Our investment in IMA Web3Labs will also enable IMA to explore the infinite applications of blockchain technology to best understand how it might fundamentally shift the landscape of the $1 trillion commercial insurance industry,” said Paul Washington, executive Vice President of IMA Financial Group and head of IMA Investments.
IMA Web3Labs will initially research risk mitigation specific to non-fungible tokens (NFTs). IMA sees a gap between the growth in NFTs and fundamental risk transfer and management strategies to secure them — a gap that leaves business operations in the decentralized finance market at risk, according to Washington.
In 2021, $20 billion of NFTs were traded, and the market value of the asset class today exceeds $40 billion. IMA plans to mint its own NFTs and use other tools to advance its expertise in the growing digital and meta opportunities ecosystem.
“We aren’t content to take the ‘wait and see’ approach that our industry often favors,” said Justin Jacobs, Senior Vice President of Marketing at IMA Financial Group and architect of IMA Web3Labs. “Society is at an inflection point, proven out by the popularity of meta-platforms. We need the ability to swiftly test, learn and adjust in a meta-native environment so we can build strategies and products that manage risks beyond the confines of the metaverse.”
Slice Supports AERO Workers’ Compensation for Small Business
Appalachian Underwriters, Inc. has teamed with cloud-based insurance platform Slice Labs Inc. to offer workers’ compensation Insurance for small businesses online.
Called AERO Workers’ Compensation, the product is available initially in Georgia and Illinois, but the company said it will soon be available nationwide to Appalachian’s 100,000 independent agents.
The platform promises that agents can quote and bind a policy in less than 10 minutes.
The AERO Insurance workers’ compensation product is available to primary industries including automobile service, construction, hospitality, manufacturing, retail/wholesale and others across 55+ class codes.
Appalachian Underwriters, Inc. (AUI) is a nationwide managing general agent and a subsidiary of Acrisure.
Blockdaemon Rolls Out Blockchain Staking Slashing Insurance Coverage
Blockchain management firm Blockdaemon announced an insurance policy to protect its customers—including Fortune 500 enterprises, banks, custodians and trusts—from the downside of blockchain staking slashing events.
Blockdaemon said it worked with insurance broker Marsh on the policy.
“This new insurance policy is first of its kind and is designed to give Blockdaemon customers comfort that there is financial backing for a system failure or security failure that impacts them,” said Konstantin Richter, CEO and Founder, Blockdaemon, said the insurance adds another assurance to its customers as to the safety of the networks it runs on.
Slashing is a mechanism built into proof-of-stake blockchain protocols to combat validator misbehavior and promote node security, availability, and network participation. If a validator shows harmful behavior, a percentage of their bonded/staked tokens will get slashed, or lost.
The new insurance policy protects Blockdaemon customers if Blockdaemon experiences a system failure or security failure that causes either a slashing event (where contractual penalties are imposed or seized by a blockchain network because of a protocol violation based on the availability of Blockdaemon’s services) or a double-signing event (where the validation of two or more different blocks at the same section of a particular blockchain network results in liability).
As part of the offering, Blockdaemon said it has designed a claims process where it will work with the insurance carrier to determine the cause and amount of loss in a quick, streamlined fashion.
Blockdaemon supports more than 50 blockchain networks in the cloud and on bare metal servers globally, Blockdaemon is used by exchanges, custodians, crypto platforms, financial institutions and developers to connect commercial stakeholders to blockchains.
Topics Workers' Compensation
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