Hitachi’s Inaugural Fintech Challenge Ideathon 2019
In January 2019, Hitachi Asia Ltd. Research and Development Center (HAS-R&D) embarked on a fintech evolution. The aim of this journey was to identify social issues in the finance sector, address the challenges faced by the industry, and at the same time showcase how Hitachi can effectively play a role in bridging the gap and enhancing the society.
Together with local banks like UOB, DBS, Bank of Singapore and fintech start-ups, the Financial Institutions Business Unit (FIBU) from HAS, Hitachi Vantara, as well as Hitachi R&D members from the States and Japan actively participated in discussions related to payments, remittances, cashless society and SME (small to mid-size enterprises) financing. The discussions concluded the social issues involving the unbanked and underbanked populations, as well as the SMEs’ in ASEAN countries. To address those concerns, an ideathon was proposed to look for innovative and scalable solutions on how Banks can serve SMEs’ more cost-effectively through digitization.
Top prize winners, BankSME (left) together with Dr. Umeshwar Dayal, General Manager for Global Center for Social Innovation (second from right), and Mr. Akira Fujibayashi, General Manager of HAS-R&D (right)
On 15 November 2019, HAS-R&D successfully concluded the Hitachi Inaugural FinTech Challenge Ideathon in Singapore. The ideathon theme centred around the unbanked and SMEs, and the event was well represented by various start-ups, students and industry experts. Three winning teams were shortlisted from six finalists. BankSME, a team made up mainly of pre-university students walked away with the top prize of a 4-day trip to Tokyo, Japan, who will present their idea to the Hitachi management. The second and third prize winners were awarded with SGD2,000 and SGD1,000 cash respectively.
The winning idea was to automate financial statement analysis which will enable banks to give more loans to SMEs via reduced operations costs. Moving forward, HAS-R&D intends to create a protype of this idea including a new business model.
Teams pitching their idea