DigiTrade, Standard Bank Ghana's corporate and investment banking division emerged as the overall winner of the recent employee hackathon.

DigiTrade developed a system that recommended using Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities for reviewing and verifying international trade documents.

According to Standard Bank, this approach would effectively solve inefficiencies associated with manual document submission.

The bank states that all winning projects will be sponsored by the relevant business chief information officers and developed through its cooperation with the Flame Station.

Standard Bank recently hosted its 10th annual Kuunda Disrupt Hackathon, a two-day event aimed to harness the group's innovative spirit in order to develop, collaborate, and significantly improve client experience while also learning.

The Hackathon received 395 proposals from across our Group's 20-country African geographic reach. Out of the overall submissions, the top 45 teams, which included over 230 hackers, competed in a Dragon's Den session to determine the top 15 teams.

From the 15, a final set of five teams were chosen, one from each of the bank’s business units, with an overall winner for 2024.

Each of the winning teams hacked their way through a variety of solutions, including improving the insurance claims process, utilizing AI for personalised purchasing, offsetting carbon emissions through trade, and, lastly, automating manual jobs using real-time analytics and data capabilities.

The winning teams by business unit were:

• CIB: DigiTrade
• BCB: Eco Traders – their solution was designed to address the issue of offsetting carbon emissions.
• IAM: AutoVision Pioneer – their solution was based on creating an automated vehicle damage assessment.
• PPB: Byte Me - their solution examined challenges related to clients missing valuable deals, promotions, and specials.
• Corporate Functions: The Night Watchers – their solution looked at addressing work tasks through using real-time analytics and data capabilities

“We are immensely proud of the calibre of ideation and solutioning that we saw over the two-day Hackathon. It speaks volumes for the innovative nature of our people across the Group and augurs well for our future. Congratulations to the winners and we look forward to working with them to implement their idea,” says Jörg Fischer, group chief information officer at Standard Bank.