The insurance industry plays a key role in any modern economy. Blockchain technology promises to completely revolutionise the industry, with several bold claims made in terms of facilitating and speeding up claims settlements and improving fraud management. In this paper, we examine the factors that may influence the extent of blockchain proliferation and penetration within the insurance industry. We adopt the STEEP framework to analyse the key social, technological, environmental, economic and political/legal issues that may impact the insurance industry’s openness or otherwise to blockchain, drawing on a diverse, multi-disciplinary literature. We supplement this with data drawn from 565 European respondents to a survey on blockchain use within the insurance industry. The results emphasise the need for the industry to properly understand and communicate how blockchain can be implemented across different insurance tasks in order to obtain a more tangible view of its benefits for staff, management and customers alike.