Malaysian Team RICHA took home the first prize of RM8,000 for their use of artificial intelligence at the inaugural HSBC Openlab Innovation Challenge.
The team built a conversational chatbot that would allow customers to check their balance, transfer funds between their own accounts, and even make payments to friends and family members.
“To have successfully developed such a comprehensive solution in thirty days is incredibly impressive. The fact that this chatbot not just resolves customer issues but actively learns from interactions to improve its service truly is remarkable,” said HSBC Malaysia Country Head, Retail Bank and Wealth Management Tara Latini.
The competition involved 30 days of rethinking, redesigning, and reinventing banking propositions and processes, with the shortlisted 24 teams pitching their innovative digital ideas to two external experts and three digital leaders from the international bank at an event held in Kuala Lumpur.
The Openlab Innovation Challenge saw HSBC partnering with the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) to bring the event to life.
“Nurturing innovation and talent building forms a vital part of part of MDEC’s role in leading the digital economy forward. We are particularly focused on encouraging the use of technology and creativity to address the challenges that face us in different areas of our lives,” said Dato’ Ng Wan Peng, Chief Operating Officer, Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) said.
Meanwhile, Puchong based digital transformer Team Iventech finished second and were awarded RM6,000 for their eWallet Payment Exchange Platform, a single platform that allows merchants to accept any eWallet for online payments.
The multi-experienced Kuala Lumpur based team “The Greatest Customer Experience” came in third and won RM4,000, by building a mobile app that helps relationship managers bring a human touch to their customer interactions, for example by providing a notification when one of their customers goes through a significant life event.
Different from a traditional Hackathon model, the HSBC openlab Innovation Challenge 2019 allowed participants to work on their solutions from the comfort of their own home/ office and provided them with access to a live sandbox openlab that has 200 Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), software development kit, as well as synthetic data to help them build their prototype.
