Money 2020 USA Hackathon Aimed At Financial Health And Inclusion
The Money2020 #Hackathon in Las Vegas drew 80 teams for an intense development effort that ran through Saturday night.
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Upcoming Swiss Hackathon Seeks To Use Blockchain To Disrupt The Insurance Industry
An #upcoming #blockchain #hackathon organized by EPAM in collaboration with #Swiss Finance + #Technology Association and Validity Labs is looking for innovative solutions to #disrupt the #insurance #industry.
Image credit: Golden Bitcoins by Julia Tsokur via Shutterstock.com
The EPAM 2016 Blockchain Hackathon, taking place on November 18 and 19, 2016 in Zurich, is seeking dynamic teams to take on the challenges set by the three largest insurance companies in Switzerland, namely SwissLife, Zurich and SwissRe.
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Apply for Blockhain Insurance Zurich Hackathon
You still can apply for it or join as a visitor, hurry up!
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The teams will be judged by representatives from these three companies on the following criteria: originality and innovation, usefulness and practicality, business potential and commercialization to go to market, design and interface, and technical implementation.
Industry experts will assist the teams during the hackathon to provide insights and answer questions about specific industry characteristics.
Insurance and Blockchain?
Like #banks, insurers have been exploring the merits of blockchain technology to disrupt their industry and streamline payments of premium and claims.
According to a Deloitte paper, blockchain technology could support the significant digital transformation underway in the industry because much of this transformation relies on data.
“Smart contracts powered by a blockchain could provide customers and insurers with the means to manage claims in a transparent, responsive and irrefutable manner,” the report states.
&8220;Contracts and claims could be recorded onto a blockchain and validated by the network, ensuring online valid claims are paid. […] Smart contracts would also enforce the claims – for instance, triggering payments automatically when certain conditions are met (and validated).&8221;
Blockchain technology could allow the industry as a whole to streamline its processing and offer a better user experience for customers. Storing claims and customer information on a blockchain would also cut down fraudulent activity.
Early blockchain developments have tended to focus on optimizing current ways of working within organizations. For instance, London-based #bitcoin startup Everledger uses the blockchain to create a permanent ledger for diamond certification and related transaction history. The ledger lets insurers and potential buyers check the history of any individual stone, helping insurers prevent, detect and counter fraud.
Blockchain Industry Challenges
Despite the enormous potential, the biggest challenges to industry-wide implementation are facilitating collaboration between market participants and technology leaders, succeeding in the operational transformation, and shaping a stimulating regulatory environment, according to McKinsey and Company.
EPAM Systems is a leading global product development and platform engineering services company and one of Forbes’ 25 Fastest Growing Public Tech Companies.
Validity Labs, a startup created by several blockchain technology experts in Zurich, aims at bridging the shortage of educated blockchain engineers, entrepreneurs and executives. The company organizes various educational events and workshops in Switzerland.
Swiss FinteCH is an independent association aimed at promoting and supporting Switzerland&8217;s #fintech industry. It connects stakeholders, creates research papers, advocates for solutions and promotes Switzerland as a global fintech hub.
The post Upcoming Swiss Hackathon Seeks To Use Blockchain To Disrupt The Insurance Industry appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News – FintechNewsCH.
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RBS Fintackathon in Tel Aviv (15 to 17 November) – registration is now open
This event, being held in partnership with Intel, Google Cloud Platform and The Floor, will run for a frantic 49 hours in a city know for its disruptive innovation and great ideas. Our target audience is the country’s entrepreneurs, academics, creators and inventors. Please come and join us.
[linkedinbadge URL=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/neil-cuthbertson-948b8a5″ connections=”off” mode=”icon” liname=”Neil Cuthbertson”]
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RGAx-AURA Blockchain Hackathon
Myself and a few of my colleagues recently traveled to St. Louis to support the first RGAx-AURA #blockchain #hackathon. From September 8-10 we were hosted by the Reinsurance Group of America (RGA), one of the world’s largest life reinsurance companies, and provided mentorship to teams discovering how blockchain could impact the future of insurance. It was a very rewarding experience and hopefully one of many blockchain hackathons I will be privileged to support in the near future.
On a personal note, I saw first hand the challenges facing developers of blockchain applications. Weather they were using Hyperledger on Bluemix, Ethereum, or a bespoke solution, teams first had to be comfortable with what makes blockchain so valuable. Not everyone recognized the best uses of the #technology and I even found myself steering a team away from an idea that was best suited for ‘centralized’ solutions. Blockchain is a new technology and there is a long runway before this plane takes off, particularly in financial use cases like insurance. I digress.
Reinsurance contracts can be very transaction intensive. Administering a single contract can last several years and present multiple challenges due to slow, missing or incomplete documentation exchange among parties. Detailed financial transactions, letters of credit creation, renewal requirements, collateralization needs and collateral drawdown can add increased layers of complexity. Using blockchain allows an insurer and its reinsurers to share a common, permissioned ledger that streamlines the process through consensus. Smart contracts establish reinsurance terms and conditions, and authorized transactions provide triggers and conditions for coverage and payments, as well as collateral creation and drawdown. The result—fewer disputes, easier reinsurance audits and lower volatility.
To apply the potential of blockchain to insurance, 60 developers, designers, and entrepreneurs from RGA, RGAx, Aura and Global IT, as well as select student groups and partner companies (like Daugherty Business Solutions), the event was a resounding success. The cafeteria and adjoining conference room were quickly transformed into a hacker-space. #IBM was there to provide mentorship and support, and I was able to give a talk on what we are doing and seeing in this space.
On Saturday afternoon the 12 surviving projects submitted and demoed in front of a panel of judges, and a crowd of talented individuals, eager to see what kind of projects emerged from just over 36 hours of hacking!
The Grand Prize winner ($15,000 and the chance to pitch to RGAx Execs) was the AURA–AMERENteam BeXchange, a x2x mobile insurance exchange platform connecting consumers who are in need of coverage with a distributed network of potential investors.
The runner up team was Daugherty team Facultative Underwriting Solutions (aka fReMarket), who created a moderated marketplace for facultative underwriting. They will receive $2,500 from Daugherty Business Solutions.
Honorable Mentions:
Find My Funds Daugherty team: Suzanne Zimmerman, Mark Schilling, Andrew Maxwell and Ted Berger.
Simply Carrots AURA team: Caroline Specter, Brian Compton, Praveen Kota and Shawn Crain.
New Kids On The Blockchain RGA team: Jonathan Bolhofner, Christina Gerst, Charles McKiel III, Curtis Keller, Bobby Buddha.
Best use of IBM BlueMix:
Healthchain Daugherty – RGA team: Lucia Del Pino, Joseph Ondrus, Venus Patel, Alex Gillete. The solution concept of Healthchain revolves around collecting data from wearable devices and storing on a block. Multiple blocks can then be added to the blockchain. The person can then give access to that information to Doctors, Insurance companies, Gym & Fitness companies, Health Monitoring Emergency companies, etc. as needed. This will enable Usage based Insurance, discounts on Insurance premiums, Gym memberships, and even emergency health monitoring services for seniors. This team won an opportunity to meet and have lunch with the IBM Blockchain team in St. Louis. You can find the code for this solution at: https://github.com/SgtRock91/marbles-chaincode.git
Overall, it was a fantastic event to be a part of and I look forward to seeing what comes out of IBM’s next Blockchain hackathon in NYC October 7-8. Further, I will be supporting the Moovel Blockchain hackathon in Austin on September 23, 2016. Hope to see a great turnout at both!
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BNP Paribas International Hackathon – a Story of Success
Datasine, one of last year’s winners of #BNP Paribas International #Hackathon, has recently published tweets regarding their story of working with BNP Paribas Cardif for the last 12 months. It is inspiring and exactly the type of success story we are focused on creating every day. At BNP Paribas we pride ourselves on working with startups to shape the future of banking and to optimize customers’ experience with the bank. The International Hackathon is part of our commitment.
Here are some of Datasine’s tweets from last week.
The second edition of the BNP Paribas International Hackathon is being held from June 17th to June 19th 2016. It is an international competition that brings together 10 entities from across BNP Paribas to create an amazing, intense and rewarding experience. The International Hackathon will take place simultaneously across 8 cities, San Francisco, London, Paris, Brussels, Rome, Berlin, Warsaw and Istanbul.
Last year we saw the creative process of startups who looked at our projects from different angles and with specific expertise that we don’t always have within our company. The International Hackathon is just the beginning of a close collaborative partnership between talented startups and BNP Paribas.
Bringing together people from different generations and experiences is how we look at the future of banking and we are excited that BNP Paribas is at the forefront of this change. Don’t miss your chance to be part of the action. If you are a #fintech startup and ready for this, join us by registering on international-hackathon.bnpparibas.
[linkedinbadge URL=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacquesdestais” connections=”off” mode=”icon” liname=”Jacques d’Estais”] is Deputy Chief Operating Officer of BNP Paribas & Head of International Financial Services and this post was originally published on linkedin.
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