Moneyhub on winning Lloyds Banking Group’s ‘Build an Open Bank Challenge’

As Open Banking and the new Payment Service Directive (PSD2) regulations are rolled out, they are set to spark a fundamental shift in financial services. Institutions taking the changes on board are unlocking new opportunities to engage and collaborate with partners in an ‘API enabled Ecosystem’, or Open Economy. This ‘ecosystem’ has the potential to provide a huge amount of benefits and opportunities for both individuals and businesses.

Moneyhub competed in, and won, Lloyds Banking Group’s ‘Build an Open Bank Challenge’, the first hackathon of its kind. With participation from 14 organisations ranging from big corporates to start-ups, the aim was to shine explore the new opportunities Open Banking can bring for both individuals and businesses

The Group provided the 14 teams attending with 3 key themes for development:

  • ‘Banking Where You Are’ to allow for better, smoother contextual experiences;
  • ‘Safeguarding Digital Identity’, enabling customers to safely and securely leverage their Lloyds Banking Group digital identity across services;
  • ‘Manage Your Finances & Plan for the Future’, helping customers understand the implication of their decisions and the impact that these might have on both their lives and their finances.

The Hackathon sent a strong signal to Lloyds Banking Group’s partners, showing that being proactive in this environment is of critical importance to secure success as Open Banking is rolled out

Moneyhub won the prize for Biggest Customer Problem Solved, having created a unique PFM proposition which put the customer first.

The team demonstrated their smart “My Financial Assistant”, a machine-learning algorithm that analyses a user’s financial accounts and transactions to discover intelligent actionable insights that help make customers feel more empowered and make better financial decisions.

After a 48 hour “hackathon” and a Dragon’s Den style 5 minute pitch to three UK Lloyds Bank board members, it was announced that Moneyhub came out top against multinational household names.

“Being named winners of the Lloyds Banking Group’s “Build an Open Bank Challenge” is a huge endorsement of our team’s hard work,”Samantha Seaton, CEO of Moneyhub, said.

“The focal points of our “I’m just a number” pitch were; Personal, Intelligent, Timely, Customer-centric and Holistic, all of which we believe to be crucial to the effectiveness of Open Banking.”

“There is a huge opportunity for organisations to be proactive, utilise Open Banking and build a meaningful, loyal relationship with their customers, and the Hackathon helped to demonstrate this. The possibilities available to those firms that are able to harness this data are incredibly exciting and Moneyhub is perfectly placed to help businesses unlock their potential.”

“The participants’ efforts in the Build an Open Bank Challenge were truly impressive, producing propositions that could have the potential to benefit millions of our customers,” Aneet Morar, Head of Partnerships at Lloyds Bank, said.

“I was inspired by the level of engagement from the partner teams and colleagues and am excited about further collaboration.”

“The learnings from the event are really important for the Group. Being able to provide a safe and secure environment to collaborate and shape opportunities with our partners will put us in a great position with the regulatory changes just over a month away. Collaborating with partners in these early days of change is critical if we want to continue to deliver the best experiences for customers.”

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