BOC Fintech Hackathon 4.0: The Fintech Experience!

Depy Douros

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Published in

The crowdpolicy collection EN

6 min readOct 13, 2023

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BOC Fintech Hackathon 4.0 was successfully held at the IDEA Innovation Centre on 6th — 8th October 2023.

It was attended by developers, students, startup companies, private sector executives and Bank of Cyprus executives. The number of registrations exceeded all expectations since more than 200 people and more than 22 teams participated. In the end, 18 teams presented their applications on Sunday afternoon.

BOC Fintech Hackathon 4.0 is the fourth marathon for the development of innovative applications in the field of financial transactions (#fintech) that has been organized in Cyprus, by Bank Of Cyprus. During the three-day marathon, the teams developed innovative applications related to the thematics areas of the Hackathon and great ideas and solutions came up.

BOC Fintech Hackathon 4.0 started on Friday, October 6th, with the Kick Off Meeting, when Mr. Demetris Papallis, Manager IT Governance at Bank of Cyprus, welcomed all participants and marked the beginning of the competition.

*Mr. Demetris Papallis, Manager IT Governance at Bank of Cyprus*

Also Mr. George Karamanolis, Co-founder CTO/CIO of Crowdpolicy, made a short presentation about the goal, the process of the hackathon and the available tools that can be used.

On Saturday, Dr. Celia Hadjichristodoulou, Founder and Managing Director GrantXpert Consulting Ltd, European University, made a short pitching workshop to all teams in order to help them, identify the solution that they are implementing and help them through the pitching process.

The teams also worked on the implementation of their ideas, using new IT technologies, Jinius APIs BoC APIs and BoC SDK, on a process that was carried out throughout the three-day period.The process was supported by 38 mentors that participated, while the Crowdpolicy team supported the teams with the operational and technical implementation of their ideas as well as the integration of the Bank’s APIs and BoC SDK.

On Sunday, October 8th, 18 teams pitched their idea to the evaluation committee, presenting their solution and implementation during the hackathon. The applications developed were related to B2B Banking Services, AI models, Digital assistants & contracts and many more. The quality of the ideas made the task of the evaluation committee difficult.

The evaluation committee consisted of:

George Kousis,Executive Director Technology & Operations at Bank of Cyprus,
Andeas Theodosiou, Manager Information Technology Services at Bank of Cyprus,
Demetris Papalis, Manager IT Governance at Bank of Cyprus
Demetris Nikolaou, Chief Digital Officer at Bank of Cyprus
George Karamanolis, Co-founder, CTO/CIO at Crowdpolicy
Loizos Michael, Professor at the Open University of Cyprus
Panayiotis Korinos, Manager Innovation & Entrepreneurship Innovation & Entrepreneurship Centre
Harald Gjermundrød, Professor at University of Nicosia
Vassos Vassiliou, Associate Professor at University of Cyprus
Dr. Celia Hadjichristodoulou, Founder and Managing Director GrantXpert Consulting Ltd, European University
Marios Kapiris, Director, Kyndryl Cyprus — Alliances and Ecosystems Leader, Kyndryl Greece & Cyprus
Leonidas Georgiou, Cross-Solutions Area Lead at Microsoft — Central Europe
Niki Ioannou, Head of Business Solutions — Cyta Business

The Winners

1st place and 5.000 euros goes to AskGeorge: an ultra personalized, context aware, cross platform application that allows users to better plan and understand their financial lives. The app synthesizes your bank statements and your financial goals to become the ultimate recommendation and data retrieval, making you the master of your data. Want to know how you can save enough money to have a wedding in Italy next year? George will tell you how to do it.

Andreas Lordos from AskGeorge & mr. George Kousis, Executive Director Technology & Operations at Bank of Cyprus

2nd place and 3.000 euros goes to The Burnout Conspiracists: A web app that aims to teach teenagers financial literacy by integrating with their youth bank accounts to monitor spending and balances. Users can set purchasing targets, view insights, and read articles about various investment options. After passing a quiz on each investment topic, they’re allowed to interact virtually with that product.

The Burnout Conspiracists & mr. Andeas Theodosiou, Manager Information Technology Services at Bank of Cyprus

3rd place and 2.000 euros goes to Finovex: Digital Platform that supports users to clarify and verify bank balance audit processes, using BOC Open Banking APIs.

Finnovex & mr. Demetris Papalis, Manager IT Governance at Bank of Cyprus

Best Use of Jinius APIs Award and 2.000 euros goes to MAD: A platform simplifies the invoicing process, automatically managing taxes and social insurance contributions, whilst also ensuring same-day payments, offering a unique feature that allows freelancers to invest a portion of their earnings wisely, helping them grow their wealth over time.

MAD & mr. Demetris Nikolaou, Chief Digital Officer at Bank of Cyprus

Our Partners Awards:

University of Nicosia:

The Scholarships were given to the first 3 winning teams, AskGeorge, The Burnout Conspiracists and Finnovex.

European University Cyprus:

5 hours of Consulting on EU Funding goes to FinPlexa: An AI Voice Banking Assistant for everyday tasks.

FinPlexa & Dr. Celia Hadjichristodoulou, Founder and Managing Director GrantXpert Consulting Ltd, European University

Future Skills Hub Scholarship, European University Cyprus (500 euro of any course by choice) goes to Data Diviners: AML Sentinel is an advanced software platform that assists banks in modernizing AML processes between companies. We offer Real-time Monitoring, AML detection using advanced algorithms and user friendly dashboard to help agents assess suspicious transactions swiftly and easily.