Hong Leong Bank launches ESG themed hackathon in search of innovative banking experiences

• Can You Hack It open to ASEAN residents to solve problem statements from HLB
• Mentors from HLB, Google Cloud, MDEC, MaGIC, JomHack Malaysia & ERTH

Hong Leong Bank (HLB) is calling all budding disruptors to join its ‘Can You Hack It’ Virtual Hackathon ASEAN Edition 2021 to find and co-create innovative solutions focused on ESG. This inaugural ASEAN virtual hackathon themed ‘Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG)’ aims to get creative ideas and unique solutions on how people in the region interpret ESG and how technology can be leveraged to improve digital banking products, services and experiences.

Open to all with the freedom to form up to a three-member team, the bank is expanding applications this time around to diverse nationalities from all over ASEAN con. ‘Can You Hack It’ is designed to allow participants to propose their ideas by solving problem statements provided by HLB, coding and validating them, and then demonstrating a working prototype to a panel of HLB executives as well as digital and FinTech players. With the focus on ESG, this year’s 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 work with and be mentored by top executives from HLB’s regional counterparts in Vietnam, Cambodia and Singapore, Google Cloud, Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation, MaGIC, JomHack Malaysia and HLB Launchpad 2021 winner, ERTH, a startup that offers e-waste recycling services.

Shailesh Grover (pic, right), Chief Digital Innovation Officer of HLB said, “Our digital at the core strategy over the past few years has successfully enabled us to continuously simplify how customers interact with us across channels of their choice and get a delightful experience. As a proud community bank with sustainability as a core value, 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.”

“Moving forward, we want to take full advantage of technologies like AI, machine learning and big data analytics to better generate and analyse ESG data. This will allow us to gain deeper insights to measure, track and continuously improve our “green quotient” when it comes to all things finance. Hence, we invite anyone across the region who want to identify solutions, new business models and opportunities relating to ESG in co-creating sustainable digital banking and finance,” added Shailesh. 

From a total of 10 teams, the ‘Can You Hack It’ Virtual Hackathon ASEAN Edition 2021 winner will get a US$5,000 cash prize, followed by US$2,500 and US$1,000 for the first and second runners up respectively. There will also be a US$350 consolation prize given to the remaining seven teams.

Applications are open until 31August 2021. To find out more information on ‘Can You Hack It’ Virtual Hackathon ASEAN Edition 2021, please visit https://www.hlb.com.my/hlbcanyouhackit/.