During the weekend of 13 – 15 October, LYIT hosted its first-ever Hackathon event, the Fintech 2025 Hackathon in partnership with Pramerica. The Hackathon was launched on Friday evening in Pramerica’s brand new Rock campus with participants moving to the LYIT campus on Saturday and Sunday.
This was a very special event for all partners involved (including Queens University Belfast, Kainos and the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland), as it showcased the strong partnerships that have been forged between the academic community and industry, within the region. Universally a Hackathon event involves a large group of people meeting to engage in collaborative computer programming. However, Fintech 2025 Hackathon was organised with a slight difference. It offered Pramerica staff and LYIT students with an interest, flair or specialism in Finance, Technology, Design, DevOps, Business, Marketing, Data, Law or Actuarial Science, an opportunity to come together to develop a business idea, product or service, that could be used in the year 2025 over the course of one weekend.
A total of 130 applications were received and 75 participants chosen to take part, all vying for the top prize of €2,500 in LK Vouchers. The weekend was full of innovative presentations, fun-spot prizes and industry insights from an expert panel of mentors, drawn from LYIT, Kainos, Enterprise Ireland, Queens University, Emergenetics, American Chamber of Commerce Ireland and Pramerica staff, who worked with the teams throughout the weekend.
In the end the Prudential in My Pocket team were the outright winners, with a business idea that focused on using MPESA as a payment process to pay Pru products. Comprising of five Pramerica staff members and two LYIT students the team worked hard over the weekend to create an app concept that could be further developed into a usable product for the year 2025.
The judging panel comprised of five industry experts, including Ciaran Harvey, Senior Managing Director & CIO, Pramerica; Anne Clydesdale, Director, Clinton Leadership Institute Queen’s University; Paul Hannigan, President, LYIT; Mark Redmond, Chief Executive, American Chamber of Commerce Ireland; and Brendan Mooney, Managing Director & CEO, Kainos.
Throughout the three days there was a great synergy between all competing teams and the blend of the experience brought by Pramerica’s staff and enthusiasm brought by LYIT’s students ensured there was mutual learning achieved throughout the weekend. Commenting on this, Paul Hannigan mentioned “This was an exciting event to showcase the synergies between LYIT and our industry partners Pramerica. The nature of the event allowed students real world experience in a pressurised environment whilst still having fun. Our students benefitted hugely from the experience”.
Follow the #Fintech2025 on Twitter to find out more about Fintech 2025 Hackathon.