Hong Leong Bank (HLB) has called out for budding disruptors to join its 'Can You Hack It' Virtual Hackathon ASEAN Edition 2021 to co-create Innovative solutions focused on ESG.
The virtual hackathon themed 'Environmental, Social and Governance ("ESG")' aims to get creative ideas and solutions on how people in the region interpret ESG and how technology can be leveraged to improve digital banking products, services, and experiences.
The invitation is open to teams of up to three people of ASEAN nationalities. Participants may propose ideas by solving problem statements provided by the Bank. Submissions, including a working prototype, will be evaluated by a panel of HLB executives, plus digital and FinTech players. This year's ESG-focused problem statement categories include community banking, community investment, climate-positive financing, socially responsible business, and financial literacy.
Teams are expected to use the likes of big data, artificial intelligence ("AI"), blockchain, machine learning and machine vision to tackle the problem statements.
Participating teams will also get a chance to be mentored by top executives from HLB's regional counterparts in Vietnam, Cambodia and Singapore, Google Cloud, Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation ("MDEC"), MaGIC, JomHack Malaysia and HLB Launchpad 2021 winner, ERTH, a startup that offers e-waste recycling services.
HLB chief digital innovation officer, Shailesh Grover, said: "Our digital-at-the-core strategy over the past few years has successfully enabled us to simplify how customers interact with us across channels of their choice and get a delightful experience. We now want to take it a step further to create effective banking and financial products and services that create long-term sustainable value for our customers, community and the planet.
With the invitation to co-create sustainable digital banking and finance, he stressed that taking full advantage of technologies like AI, machine learning and big data analytics will allow for better generate and analyse ESG data, gain deeper insights to measure, track and improve its "green quotient" when it comes to all things finance.
