The insurance ecosystem today is fundamentally a world of contracts – contracts between insurance companies and insurees, contracts between insurance companies and contractors (health care providers, home builders, auto repair shops, etc.), and contracts between insurees and contractors.

The sheer number of contracts and their complexity makes it difficult for the parties in this ecosystem to function optimally. Insurees frequently experience insurance as opaque, slow, expensive, and inflexible. Contractors are frustrated by lack of transparency and payment delays. And insurance companies miss opportunities that would arise from better management of these contracts.

The mission of the CodeX Insurance Initiative is to bring the technology of computable contracts to bear on these problems. We believe that in many areas it is possible to codify the terms of contracts in computable form, to make these computable contracts available to all parties in an online contract ecosystem (which we call ContractNet), and to use this ecosystem to provide users of all stripes with answers to real and hypothetical questions about the terms of these contracts.

In order to facilitate the development and maintenance of this ecosystem, ContractNet will provide a suite of tools to find contracts (by browsing, keyword search, and semantic search). It will provide tools for applying computable contracts to specific cases (both real and hypothetical). And it will provide tools for individuals or groups to author and/or analyze computable contracts.

When deployed, the computable contracts generated via the ecosystem will provide for faster claim handling and increased transparency, which will enable insurance carriers to increase their Net Promoter Score by providing a better service. Automation of many claim handling processes will reduce cost. The ability to analyze and simulate the results of an event on a portfolio will help predict risks. The ability to develop new products fast and offer them online, will create a more agile business that can respond to new market opportunities swiftly.

Our ultimate goal is to create a future in which consumers around the world will be able to get their complex questions about different insurance scenarios answered immediately by an intelligent system, and where they can – with some clicks – customize insurance to their specific needs. These streamlined solutions will result in thus far unseen affordability and transparency of health, and property and casualty insurance. At the same time, in this new future, insurance companies will have these computable contracts with customers and other business partners at their fingertips, being able to better understand risks and to generate a whole new line of insurance products. Insurance companies will also be able to easily monitor their regulatory compliance and interact with regulators.

CodeX will make the tools developed as part of the initiative available to initiative members on equal terms or via an open source license (to be determined in consideration of charter members’ preferences in this regard). For insurance companies that are interested in sponsoring specific research branches outside of the collective, specific intellectual property arrangements can be made.

Joining the initiative will be leaders from the insurance industry, researchers, regulators, legal experts, tech companies, designers, and entrepreneurs from around the world who share this ambition. Together, we will establish computable contracts as the de-facto standard for insurance contracts that operate in the global market.