Ideas to better serve customers include reimbursing travel expenses, bill-savings to SMS banking services, spending visualisation and business audit services.
A new app idea, ‘Savetastic’, which will use customer’s banking information to offer them savings on a range of items such as utility bills, travel and shopping, took the top prize at Ireland’s first dedicated banking hackathon organised by Ulster Bank and global experts at the Open Bank Project held at NDRC in Dublin. The weekend-long event brought together almost 100 coders, designers, mentors and investors for an intensive period of peer-to-peer idea generation and programming focused on new thinking for banks and bank customers.
The Savetastic team* will now avail of three months incubation at Ulster Bank with access to a number of mentors/ executives and specialists at Ulster Bank, to develop this idea into a commercial proposition. Each member of the team also received a Parrot AR 2 Drone, 2 with GPS and a camera, which is wi-fi enabled.
Participants brought 17 ideas to the table at a hugely creative session on Friday night, distilling them down to eight ideas which were ‘hacked’ together by the teams using the Open Bank Project API system, data sandbox and other partner services (including MongoDB, Big Red Cloud, data.gov.ie, Xtreme Push, Aylien, Evercam and OpenCorporates) on Saturday and Sunday morning. Each group was mentored by technical, design, investor and banking advisers to help them to sharpen their ideas into a proposition to pitch to the judges on Sunday afternoon. Pitch training sessions were also available as well as some diversion from the Irish Whiskey Ambassador provided by Irish Distillers.
Commenting on the event, Chris Davis, Chief Operating Officer, Ulster Bank said:
“We had a fantastic event, great ideas were debated and some really interesting ones took the top prizes. I’d like to congratulate the team on their very worthy win for the excellent idea of ‘Savetastic’.
“This was the first time an event of this kind took place in Ireland, it brought together almost 100 energetic, creative and innovative people and they really challenged the way banks think. At Ulster Bank we’re aiming to become the number one bank for customer service, trust and advocacy so we’re open to all ideas and new thinking on how to best serve our customers. We’ve now to keep up this momentum at our second event in The MAC, Belfast from Friday 13th to Sunday 15th February.”
Simon Redfern, founder of the Open Bank Project and CEO of TESOBE said:
“We would like to congratulate Savetastic on their win at this weekend’s hackathon. The Open Bank Project is thrilled to be working with Ulster Bank on these events. It’s great to be engaging with the fintech communities in Dublin and Belfast and it has been exciting to see this process working in Ireland following a successful series of events we’ve held across Europe. As this weekend has shown, there’s no limit to the ideas that can be explored and we’re thoroughly looking forward seeing what emerges in Belfast in two weeks’ time.”
Louise Hodgson, Executive Director, The Undergraduate Awards and judge at the Hackathon said:
“The ideas that emerged from this weekend’s hackathon were incredible. It is amazing to see what can develop when a group like this comes together. The judges were overwhelmed by the outcomes and we are looking forward to seeing how Savetastic can take this idea and turn it into a tangible business process in the working environment.”
Judges at the event were Dermot Berkery of Delta Partners, Louise Hodgson, entrepreneur, Undergraduate Awards and editor ‘New Thinking, New Ireland’, Marc O'Dwyer, CEO, Big Red Cloud, Brett Myers, CEO of CurrencyFair and Chris Davis, COO of Ulster Bank.
More information is available at http://www.hackmakethebank.com/go/ulster-bank/ or get in touch via twitter at @OpenBankProject
