11 ideas for tech that matters from HackIf 2023

Imagine an atmosphere full of enthusiasm and a collective determination to come up with ideas that will drive the development of the entire organization. That’s exactly what happened at HackIf, our annual Summer Campus hackathon. 11 teams made up of our business and tech professionals worked relentlessly to present the jury with ideas on how to improve our product portfolio, transform the development process and bring the latest technological advances in AI to our daily operations. Here’s what they came up with!

With customer experience in mind

Our insurance product portfolio is already quite extensive, so most of the product-related ideas were focused on improving the customer experience. One such idea aims to streamline health claims information required for tax declarations to the State Revenue Service (SRS) through the mobile app and website. This would involve providing insurance data on paid healthcare services directly to the SRS system, similar to how banks work, thus eliminating the need for customers to manually prepare and send this information.

Another team, inspired by the success of our in-car app for Volvo vehicles in Sweden, proposed new features that would allow car owners to request roadside assistance and even file a claim from the driver’s seat.

Embracing the power of AI

AI is already an integral part of the insurance industry, transforming the way insurers assess risk, underwrite policies, and interact with customers. So it’s no coincidence that the HackIf teams were also considering how to further integrate AI technology into our product portfolio and day-to-day operations.

Several teams were working on solutions that, like ChatGPT, would allow us to create a large internal knowledge base by combining different sources of data and information. This would be a valuable tool for any team member to quickly access any information they need to do their job — from product usage statistics to technical support questions, and so on. In addition, it would be a time saver for anyone providing information support to their colleagues.

AI was also used to offer a unique approach to a solution that is already considered common in the insurance market — car damage photo upload within the mobile app. The winning team presented a way to use AI to automatically analyze and detect if there is any damage to the vehicle windshield. This would be beneficial from both a business and IT perspective, helping with fraud detection and reducing the time spent on complex integrations between our systems.

Improving development process efficiency

We’re a large organization that develops a lot of solutions, both for our customers and for internal needs. I was glad to see that the teams were not only looking at building great products, but also at improving the way we work so that we can be more efficient and deliver better solutions.

One of the ideas was to implement a feature that would allow anyone to use a single authentication solution in their products/apps, without having to build it from scratch. Another team built a tool to collect user stories from a specific date range and automatically generate release notes from DevOps work items. Such a solution would save development teams time and effort, improve the accuracy and consistency of release notes, and improve communication with stakeholders.

Testing also plays a crucial role in delivering solutions that get the job done. Therefore, one of the teams decided to tackle the challenge of obtaining close-to-real-life test data for use in quality assurance processes. As a result, they created an initial platform that could serve as the basis for further solution development.

Cross-team collaboration brings out the best results

This year, we saw a lot of cross-team collaboration, not only between different tech teams, but also between IT and business. After the event, many colleagues shared that it was interesting to work in such an environment and that

the participation of business representatives should be a must in the future. They bring different and much needed market perspectives to the table, allowing us not only to work on proof of concepts, but also share experiences between teams.

Throughout the event, I was happy to witness great teamwork, support for each other and cheering for all ideas equally. This has once again been a fantastic experience and I’m looking forward to the next HackIf already!