Over 160 eager participants nationwide congregated at Menara Hong Leong on 6 and 7 October to show their mettle in solving problems and improving services and products provided by the financial industry within 24 hours deadline at Hong Leong Bank Berhad’s inaugural Can You Hack It 2018 (“HLB” or “the Bank”).
The hackathon was the Bank’s novel approach at identifying talents capable of coming up with exciting and creative solutions for banking and business-related challenges. The Bank collaborated with JomHack Malaysia to reimagine the way of hiring fit-for-future talent as well as rewarding great ideas for better banking.
The participants were formed into groups of three and presented with a problem statement after which they were required to develop innovative solutions that revolutionise the way customers do banking today. They were able to tap on the expertise and support from a group of mentors from the Bank and experts from the digital industry.
Domenic Fuda, Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of HLB said that he was impressed by the sheer talent that was demonstrated at the ‘Can You Hack It 2018’ hackathon.
“Overall, all the participants displayed a strong understanding of the issues faced by today’s consumers, and they raised the bar through innovative ideas and solutions that they developed. The judges certainly found it hard to narrow down the winning teams but ultimately, settled for what the Bank has always championed, which is to make banking simply simple. The winning ideas solved complex problems with ingeniously simple solutions – all executed within 24 hours. It is this type of talent that can disrupt the financial and banking industry and we look forward to implement some of these ideas,” commented Fuda.
Shailesh Grover, Chief Digital and Innovation Officer of HLB who was also one of the mentors and judges in ‘Can You Hack It 2018’ said,
“I am extremely impressed and excited to see the energy, customer centricity, out-of-the-box creative thinking and relentless focus on execution to design the right experience for our customers. The quality of questions asked by the participants during the mentoring sessions evidenced a very mature thought process with a clear focus on customers’ outcome. The participants also demonstrated high levels of confidence and the ability to defend their thinking while being open to constructive feedback. The participants have all the hallmarks to be great talents for organisations that are looking to leapfrog into the future.”
The grand prize winner, Team Twenty Four took home RM8,000 while the first runner up team, Team Twelve won RM5,000 and Team Four Five took the second runner up position with a cash prize of RM1,000.
Given the strong response, the Bank will be running the ‘Can You Hack It’ hackathon twice a year which will be opened to final year university students, fresh graduates, freelancers as well as startup entrepreneurs and those from the tech community. Outstanding participants may also receive an invitation to join the Bank for an exciting career while promising projects may receive further funding and support for incubator or accelerator programmes.
