Forward Industries and crypto investment firm RockawayX have co-led a strategic investment in OnRe, a startup building reinsurance infrastructure on the Solana blockchain, with the aim of bringing traditional risk transfer markets onto decentralized rails.
The companies said Tuesday they were co-leading OnRe’s $5 million Series A round, with Forward planning to commit up to $25 million to the platform’s yield-bearing token on Solana.
The funding will be used to expand OnRe’s platform and attract more institutional participants into onchain reinsurance, a niche but emerging segment within decentralized finance.
OnRe seeks to shift parts of the reinsurance market – where insurers transfer risks to third parties – to blockchain infrastructure, using tokenization and smart contracts to manage underwriting and capital flows.
The initiative reflects a broader push to experiment with real-world financial services, including insurance and reinsurance, on blockchain networks, although adoption is still in the early stages.
Forward Industries (FWDI) is Solana’s largest corporate holder ($SOL), with more than 7.01 million $SOL on its balance sheet, according to industry data. Shares traded on the Nasdaq rose about 5.8% during Tuesday’s regular session, according to Yahoo Finance. With after-hours activity, most of that increase eventually evaporated. $SOL was last trading at $86.61, up about 2.7%.
Forward Industries’ $SOL accumulation over time. Source: Coin gecko
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Blockchain pilots target inefficiencies in the global reinsurance market
Although estimates vary, the global reinsurance market is valued at over $600 billion, with growth driven by rising demand for risk transfer. The total value of reinsurance premiums is approaching $2 trillion.
Blockchain-based platforms are being tested as a way to streamline traditionally manual processes by introducing shared ledgers for real-time tracking, underwriting and claims handling.
OnRe is not alone in this effort. Re, a decentralized reinsurance protocol, is another project that aims to connect institutional capital with collateralized insurance risks while offering tokenized yield products.
Other protocols are also emerging to provide insurance and reinsurance coverage for decentralized finance applications and smart contracts, although the industry is still in its early stages and largely experimental.
There are also attempts to apply blockchain and digital assets in different parts of the insurance value chain. For example, insurance broker Aon has tested the use of stablecoins to pay insurance premiums.
Tim Fletcher, CEO of Aon’s financial services division, said tokenized assets are likely to become increasingly integrated into traditional financial systems.
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