Deloitte, Ava Labs link up in bid to streamline natural disaster reimbursements
Professional services firm Deloitte announced Tuesday a partnership with Ava Labs to create a blockchain-based disaster recovery platform.
The new platform, called Close as You Go (CAYG), aims to streamline disaster reimbursement applications to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), with the goal of saving these agencies millions of dollars typically lost to noncompliance with federal procurement requirements, benefit duplications and missing documentation.
“By guiding local government users through workflows and immutably documenting all these items upfront, these users minimize the risk of deobligations, adverse findings, and clawbacks that often result later in the process from these common issues,” John Wu, President of Ava Labs, told The Block.
CAYG went live on November 16 and is being piloted in the natural disaster-prone southeastern United States. “Counties can move faster when the time comes to submit those requests, since all the documentation has been pre-validated, immutably stored and reviewed in advance,” Wu says.
Deloitte’s partnership with Ava Labs follows other organizations trying to use distributed tools like blockchains to augment natural disaster relief.
In April, the Danish Red Cross opted to put its volcano catastrophe bond — insurance-based relief for volcanic natural disasters — on a blockchain, also citing increased speed and lower costs as its motivations.
