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Build Blockchain Insurance Application

This project showcases the use of blockchain in insurance domain for claim processing. In this application, we have four participants, namely insurance, police, repair shop and shop peer. Insurance peer is the insurance company providing the insurance for the products and it is responsible for processing the claims. Police peer is responsible for verifying the theft claims. Repair shop peer is responsible for repairs of the product while shop peer sells the products to consumer.

Audience level : Intermediate Developers

Included Components

Hyperledger Fabric
Docker

Application Workflow Diagram

Generate Certificates for peers
Build Docker images for network
Start the insurance network

Prerequisites

We find that Blockchain can be finicky when it comes to installing Node. We want to share this StackOverflow response - because many times the errors you see with Composer are derived in having installed either the wrong Node version or took an approach that is not supported by Composer:

Docker - v1.13 or higher
Docker Compose - v1.8 or higher
NPM - v5.6.0 or higher
nvm - v8.11.3 (use to download and set what node version you are using)
Node.js - node v8.11.3 ** don't install in SUDO mode
Git client - v 2.9.x or higher
Python - 2.7.x

Steps

Run the application

1. Run the application

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/IBM/build-blockchain-insurance-app.git

docker login

Run the build script to download and create docker images for the orderer, insurance-peer, police-peer, shop-peer, repairshop-peer, web application and certificate authorities for each peer. This will run for a few minutes.

For Mac user:

cd build-blockchain-insurance-app
./build_mac.sh

For Ubuntu user:

cd build-blockchain-insurance-app
./build_ubuntu.sh

You should see the following output on console:

Creating repairshop-ca ...
Creating insurance-ca ...
Creating shop-ca ...
Creating police-ca ...
Creating orderer0 ...
Creating repairshop-ca
Creating insurance-ca
Creating police-ca
Creating shop-ca
Creating orderer0 ... done
Creating insurance-peer ...
Creating insurance-peer ... done
Creating shop-peer ...
Creating shop-peer ... done
Creating repairshop-peer ...
Creating repairshop-peer ... done
Creating web ...
Creating police-peer ...
Creating web
Creating police-peer ... done

Wait for few minutes for application to install and instantiate the chaincode on network

Check the status of installation using command:

docker logs web

On completion, you should see the following output on console:

> blockchain-for-insurance@2.1.0 serve /app
> cross-env NODE_ENV=production&&node ./bin/server

/app/app/static/js
Server running on port: 3000
Default channel not found, attempting creation...
Successfully created a new default channel.
Joining peers to the default channel.
Chaincode is not installed, attempting installation...
Base container image present.
info: [packager/Golang.js]: packaging GOLANG from bcins
info: [packager/Golang.js]: packaging GOLANG from bcins
info: [packager/Golang.js]: packaging GOLANG from bcins
info: [packager/Golang.js]: packaging GOLANG from bcins
Successfully installed chaincode on the default channel.
Successfully instantiated chaincode on all peers.

Use the link http://localhost:3000 to load the web application in browser.

The home page shows the participants (Peers) in the network. You can see that there is an Insurance, Repair Shop, Police and Shop Peer implemented. They are the participants of the network.

Imagine being a consumer (hereinafter called “Biker”) that wants to buy a phone, bike or Ski. By clicking on the “Go to the shop” section, you will be redirected to the shop (shop peer) that offers you the following products.

You can see the three products offered by the shop(s) now. In addition, you have insurance contracts available for them. In our scenario, you are an outdoor sport enthusiast who wants to buy a new Bike. Therefore, you’ll click on the Bike Shop section.

In this section, you are viewing the different bikes available in the store. You can select within four different Bikes. By clicking on next you’ll be forwarded to the next page which will ask for the customer’s personal data.

You have the choice between different insurance contracts that feature different coverage as well as terms and conditions. You are required to type-in your personal data and select a start and end date of the contract. Since there is a trend of short-term or event-driven contracts in the insurance industry you have the chance to select the duration of the contract on a daily basis. The daily price of the insurance contract is being calculated by a formula that had been defined in the chaincode. By clicking on next you will be forwarded to a screen that summarizes your purchase and shows you the total sum.

The application will show you the total sum of your purchase. By clicking on “order” you agree to the terms and conditions and close the deal (signing of the contract). In addition, you’ll receive a unique username and password. The login credentials will be used once you file a claim. A block is being written to the Blockchain.

note You can see the block by clicking on the black arrow on the bottom-right.

Once an incident has happened the Biker can file a claim on his own by selecting the “claim Self-Service” tab.

The Biker will be asked to login by using the credentials that had been given to him before.

He can file a new claim by selecting the tab shown above.

The Biker can briefly describe the damage on his bike and/or select whether it has been stolen. In case the Bike has been stolen the claim will be processed through the police who has to confirm or deny the theft (option 1). In case there was just a damage the claim will be processed through the repair shop (option 2). In the following section, we will start with option 1.

Option 1

Once the Biker has submitted the claim it will be shown in the box marked in red. Furthermore, another block is being written to the chain.

The Biker can also view the active claims. Note: You may need to re-log into Claims Processing to see the new active claim.

By selecting “claim processing” the Insurance company can view all active claims that have not been processed yet. A clerk can decide on the claims in this view. Since we are still looking at option 1 the theft has to be confirmed or denied by the police. Therefore, the insurance company can only reject the claim at this point in stage.

The Police Peer can view the claims that include theft. In case the bike has been reported stolen they can confirm the claim and include a file reference number. In case no theft has been reported they can reject the claim and it will not be processed.

Let’s assume the Biker did not rip-off the insurance company and has reported the bike as stolen. The police will confirm the claim which results in another Block being written to the chain.

Going back to the “claim processing” tab you can see that the insurance company has the option to reimburse the claim now because the police had confirmed that the bike has been stolen. Block is being written to the chain

The Biker can see the new status of his claim which changed to reimbursed.

Option 2

Option 2 covers the case of an accident.

The insurance “claim processing” tab shows the unprocessed claims. A clerk can choose between three options on how to process the claim. “Reject” will stop the claim process whereas “reimburse” leads directly to the payment to the customer. In case something needs to be repaired the insurance company has the option to select “repair”. This will forward the claim to a repair shop and will generate a repair order. A block is being written to the chain.

The Repair Shop will get a message showing the repair order. Once they’ve done the repair works the repair shop can mark the order as completed. Afterwards, the insurance company will get a message to proceed the payment to the repair shop. a block is being written to the chain

The Biker can see in his “claim self-service” tab that the claim has been resolved and the bike was repaired by the shop.

The insurance company has the option to activate or deactivate certain contracts. This does not mean that contracts that have already been signed by customers will be no longer valid. It just does not allow new signings for these types of contracts. In addition, the insurance company has the possibility to create new contract templates that have different terms and conditions and a different pricing. Any transaction will result in a block being written to the chain.

Additional resources

Following is a list of additional blockchain resources:

Troubleshooting

Run clean.sh to remove the docker images and containers for the insurance network.

./clean.sh

License

Apache 2.0

wmena / build-blockchain-insurance-app