Winners of
ABN AMRO Global Hackathon 2016

Date: 2016

In the financial world, losing time can lead to losing business, which ultimately means losing money. ABN AMRO were using a core banking system that was so overly complex that whenever there was a change in personnel, IT assistance was always required. If it was possible for the business to manage user roles themselves this would save a significant amount of time and effort and also hopefully reduce the possibility of mistakes.

Therefore, ABN AMRO decided to hold a hackathon which would challenge teams to come up with solutions to these problems. However, this would be a little different from a traditional hackathon.

Half of the teams would be competing from the Netherlands and the other half would be in India. The teams in the Netherlands would be commandeering the workspaces of ABN AMRO employees at their premises in Amstelveen.

For even more added pressure, everything needed to be completed before the employees showed up for work at 08:30 and wanted their desks back. Also, there were none of the traditional hackathon luxuries such as a dedicated sleeping area or perks, like a DJ or a bar.

Fueled primarily on snacks, pizza and caffeine, Finaps worked through the night. The team developed the ‘T1000’ Role Management system to work in conjunction with the existing ABN AMRO ‘T24’ system. The T1000 provided an interface for managing user roles that was fast, intuitive and simple to use.

This solution was considered so effective that Finaps were crowned winners of the event.