John Hancock, a US subsidiary of Toronto’s Manulife Financial Corp., has partnered ConsenSys and BlockApps to develop an Ethereum blockchain PoC within the company’s Lab of Forward Thinking (LOFT).

The LOFT hopes blockchain technologies will be able “to simplify and enhance the customer experience” during the very first stages of their work with the company which involve dealing with regulatory and legal aspects of wealth management.

“We could not have found a better partner than ConsenSys and BlockApps to accelerate our understanding and ability to build out applications leveraging blockchain,” says Ace Moghimi, Assistant Vice President and Head of Innovation for North America.

Launched in Boston in 2015, the LOFT is one of the many John Hancocks’s facilities aimed at developing new ways of fulfilling the company’s customer-centric strategy. 

“LOFT is just that - an organization focused around forward thinking. They are building the technical knowhow and internal stakeholder support that will allow John Hancock to be a disruptor rather than a disruptee as the blockchain revolution materializes. We are extremely enthusiastic about our partnership with LOFT,” said Kieren James-Lubin, Chief Product Officer of BlockApps.

In his turn, Igor Lilic, the Principal Technical Lead of ConsenSys Enterprise called LOFT group “a model example of innovation within the enterprise”, the teams being “bright, enthusiastic “ and “not afraid of getting their hands dirty by building prototypes.”

“We are incredibly enthusiastic about John Hancock’s commitment to the blockchain ecosystem and we look forward to continued collaboration as LOFT builds smart contract based platforms,” concluded Lilic.

John Hancock is a life insurance and financial services provider established back in 1862 as a four-person company, which later grew to the heights of a US leader and now is operating as a US unit of the Canadian financial services provider Manulife.


Maria Rudina