The second ever Railsbank Hackathon was a roaring success which saw Team Neon take top honours and a £750 first prize.
Not far behind were Team SmartLend in second place and a prize of £500, and Team Liber in third, also with a prize of £500.
Team Neon was made up of Ryan Clifford, Adam Whitrow, Mr R S Shah, Wilson Lou and Seweryn Bidolach. It presented an investment club social platform concept, empowering young investors to make their first steps in creating a diverse portfolio. This allowed them to create investment clubs, join existing and harness their small monthly expense into a bigger shared pot. Team Neon said: “It was great fun being involved in the Railsbank hackathon and the challenge was authentic and absorbing. It was particularly good to come out the winner and meet the people who were involved, including the speakers, judges and sponsors. Railsbank put on a great event and we’d like to thank them for their hospitality.” Team SmartLend consisted of Federico Barbero, Yakko Majuri Silveira and Emanuele Falcioni. Their presentation focussed on friends lending friends money, instantaneously with an automated contract, via the SmartLend platform. Alexandru Rosianu and Nicole Vukadinova were Team Liber. Their presentation focussed on a product for customers to make automatic investments. In 48 hours they coded a fully working app with real UK bank accounts, deposit and withdrawal, face biometrics, and live Bitcoin price updates. Read Alexandru’s blog about the hackathon.
Railsbank established the now annual event to bring together innovators to create innovative banking and fund management services using APIs.
#OpenBankHack18 took place on 23 to 25 November, 2018 at the Dreadnought Building at the University of Greenwich, London. The participants formed teams and collaborated with mentors to create solutions to challenges based on tackling financial crime; opening up the world of fund management, preventing fraud and building a challenger bank within 48 hours.
Nigel Verdon, co-founder and CEO of Railsbank, said: “This was our second Hackathon and once again, it proved to be a great success. The calibre of the teams was very high and all our participants were tested to a very high level, an effort which was matched by the judges. With this event over, we now start planning for our third hackathon, which takes place in November next year.”
The other judges were: Tarne Bevan, COO Investments at GAM; Gabrielle Inzirillo, Director at Plug & Play Ventures; Alexa Fernandez, Open Innovation at BBVA; Alesis Novik, CTO and co-founder of Aimbrain, Peter Bainbridge-Clayton, Chief Technology Officer at kompany; Andy Thomas, Chief Technology Officer at Aprexo and, Adam McGreggor, Chief Platform Officer at Railsbank.
Photo shows: Nigel Verdon, CEO & co-founder of Railsbank, Jon Koplin, JP Rangaswami and Clive Mitchell, COO of Railsbank.
Photos credits, Allan Jenkins