Chip n'Sim (above with Ellvena Graham of Ulster Bank), took the top prize at Northern Ireland’s first dedicated banking hackathon organised by Ulster Bank and global experts at the Open Bank Project held at The Mac in Belfast. The weekend-long event brought together almost 80 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 Chip n'Sim team will now be able to avail of three months incubation at Ulster Bank with access to a number of mentors/ executives and specialists at Ulster Bank, to help develop their idea into a commercial proposition. Each member of the team also received a Parrot AR 2 Drone, 2 equipped with GPS and a camera, which is wi-fi enabled.
Participants brought 19 ideas at a hugely creative session on Friday night, distilling them down to 7 ideas which were ‘hacked’ together by the teams using the Open Bank Project API system and data sandbox and other partner services (including, Big Red Cloud, data.gov.ie, mailjet) 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 additional advice and guidance throughout the process. As a treat, the teams participating in the hackathon also got to take part in a beer tasting session, courtesy of the craft brewery Farmageddon.
Commenting on the event, Chris Davis, Chief Operating Officer, Ulster Bank said:
“I’d like to congratulate Chip n'Sim on their very worthy win for the excellent idea of technology linking smartphones with ATMs to cut waiting times at banking machines and improve security. This was the first time an event of this kind took place in Northern Ireland, it brought together almost 35 energetic, creative and innovative people and they really challenged the way banks think, building on the event held in Dublin earlier this month. 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.”
Simon Redfern, founder of the Open Bank Project and CEO of TESOBE said:
“We would like to congratulate Chip n'Sim on their win at this weekend’s hackathon. We have seen excellent engagement with the fintech communities in Dublin and Belfast with Ulster Bank, which builds on the 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.”
Diane Roberts, CEO Xcell Partners and judge at the Hackathon said:
“The ideas that emerged from Ulster Bank’s ‘hackathon’ were really incredible. The judges were very impressed by the teams, their ideas and their fresh thinking. I look forward to seeing how Chip n'Sim can take this idea and turn it into a tangible business process in the working environment.”
Judges at the event were Thomas Aidan Curran, ReversingLabs, zoobe message entertainment GmbH, serlo e.V.; Diane Roberts, CEO Xcell Partners; Jeff Peel, Managing Director, Quadriga Consulting Ltd.; Hal Wilson, Partner in Pentech Ventures and Ellvena Graham, Head of Ulster Bank Northern Ireland and Managing Director of SME Banking.
More information is available at http://www.hackmakethebank.com/go/ulster-bank/ or follow the conversation at #hackmakethebank
