- A two-day hacking marathon focusing on solutions on the PSD2 directive took place on 2nd and 3rd September in Ljubljana, Slovenia
- UniCredit welcomed developers, designers and "out of the box" thinkers from all over the world
- Selected winning teams got a financial award and will present their projects to UniCredit Group's CEE Division top management, with the possibility to take part in the implementation of the solution
UniCredit - together with ABC accelerator - launched the first UniCredit Hackathon CEE, a global competition that took place in Ljubljana, Slovenia, on 2nd and 3rd September 2017.
Developers, representatives of Fintech Start-ups and Software Companies, "out of the box" thinkers, as well as employees of UniCredit applied to the initiative and gathered in 12 international teams. Selected participants came from Albania, Austria, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Turkey, and even Japan.
Leveraging on the new PSD2 regulation, by which all EU financial institutions will have to provide third parties direct access to their customers' accounts, the Hackathon challenge was: "How client account information can be used to improve customer experience and create value both for our customers and the bank". Participants would develop , for example, apps and platforms to analyse client data, and while doing that provide better customer experience.
Winning teams were selected on Sunday 3rd September at the end of the intensive two-day competition and will present their projects to the top management of the CEE Division with the opportunity to be part of the teams implementing the solutions. They are:
1st place (awarded 5.000 EUR)
Emre Erol, Turkey
Gün Makinabakan, Turkey
Cahit Taşkın, Turkey
Recep Tiryaki, Turkey
Tanja Arsenijevic, Serbia (UniCredit Bank Serbia)
Nikolina Cvitanovic, Croatia (Zagrebačka Banka)
Todor Kondev, Bulgary (UniCredit Bulbank)
2nd place (awarded 3.500 EUR)
Petra Fon, Slovenia
Boštjan Pišler, Slovenia
Ivan Litsvinenka, Italy
Aleksander Zaras, Poland (Unicredit Services)
Aron Nemeth, Hungary (UniCredit Bank Hungary)
Gabor Koros, Hungary (UniCredit Bank Hungary)
3rd place (awarded 1.500 EUR)
Iztok Sebič, Slovenia
Giuseppe Guarnieri, Italy
Alessandro Panza, Italy
Amadej Tauses, Slovenia
Marina Sinitsyna, Russia (UniCredit Bank Russia)
Alisa Tarada, Russia (UniCredit Bank Russia)
Sergio Marino, Board Member, UniCredit Banka Slovenija d.d. said: "Many great ideas connected to the PSD2 challenge were presented by the groups on the last day of the Hackathon; some already highly developed, others at a starting point. Having a consistent business case, a working demo, the presentation itself and the creativeness of the idea were the main items reviewed when selecting the winners. Although UniCredit Hackathon CEE is over, it does not actually end up here. The best teams will present their creative idea to the CEE Division top management and could be part of our teams when implementing the solution."
Francesco Vercesi, Head of Agile for CEE at UniCredit Group, added: "The UniCredit Hackathon CEE gave us the opportunity to see what people coming from different backgrounds can do together, developing ideas that can be put in practice later. At UniCredit, we believe in innovation and in this context we adopted an Agile framework that promotes a new way of working and better responds to a fast-changing environment. This approach, whereby various teams collaborate to deliver early and repeatedly, helped frame the UniCredit Hackathon CEE itself. We are proud today of the outcome delivered, and congratulate the winning teams.
Milan, 6 September 2017
Contact:
UniCredit Media Relations
Tel.: +39 02 88623569
E-mail: mediarelations@unicredit.eu
About UniCredit
UniCredit is a simple successful Pan European Commercial Bank, with a fully plugged in CIB, delivering a unique Western, Central and Eastern European network to our extensive client franchise: 25 million clients. UniCredit offers local expertise as well as an international one reaching and supporting its clients globally, providing them with unparalleled access to leading banks in its 14 core markets as well as in other 18 countries worldwide. UniCredit European banking network includes Italy, Germany, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey.
About ABC
ABC Accelerator is the largest private venture accelerator in Slovenia and the wider region. It has been established in 2015 and has since accelerated the growth of almost 100 start-ups - companies that are changing the economy and growing faster than traditional companies. They have developed a system for accelerating the growth of start-ups with innovative ideas and help them succeed on the market. ABC is also helping to change small, medium and large corporations with its enterprise program, spreading the start-up mentality to traditional companies. They support big companies in exploiting the potential of new ideas originating from both, inside and outside of their companies. The combination of very fast growth and new, innovative ideas from the start-ups and knowledge, investments and people available to large corporations has arguably the greatest potential to disrupt the existing markets.