How the Hackathon elevates the WBS MSc journey

MSc student, Aditya Dhanraj, discusses his experiences of the Gillmore Centre’s Hackathon event.

The Future Leaders Hackathon, hosted at the Gillmore Centre for Financial Technology, was far more than just a typical ‘hackathon’ or a standard coding competition as one might presume it to be. As a student of MSc Financial Technology, I found it to be the true encapsulation of fresh, transformative ideas, where more than eight power-packed teams brought in well thought out and meticulously designed solutions.

These teams were addressing three specific problem statements provided to us, all centred around a pivotal, overarching question: How can modern technology fundamentally reshape and improve the traditional finance spaces?

The problem statements we tackled were sharply focused on key areas where the financial industry is currently struggling or evolving. These included:

1. Smarter Debt Management systems to help users handle liabilities
2. Creating a better, consumer-based finance platform specifically optimized for trading
3. Unboxing the "black box" of loan approvals to create transparency in how decisions are made.

As we move rapidly towards a more technologically integrated world, to the point where deep-thinking risks are becoming a luxury because generative AI is doing so much of the heavy lifting for us that it becomes crucial to study the implications of this revolution.

Hackathon at WBS

We are standing on the precipice of a major shift. I see this current era as a ‘new age renaissance,’ a time where AI will inevitably dominate standard workflows. In such a landscape, critical thinking becomes vital to human development.

We are approaching a time where we might not be doing the ‘physical labour’ per se, be it manual work or even the hard distinct labour of coding a website line-by-line. Instead, the focus shifts to the conceptual.

The ability to think about what that website should do, and the specific value it creates for the human user, becomes the crucial thinking approach for the new world. This philosophical shift was the core idea behind this hackathon: to challenge students not just to code, but to truly think, and to devise innovative solutions to the tangible financial problems that we are facing today.

The specific problem statement that has always interested me, right from my early days was the need for a platform where users could learn trading in a more enticing and engaging format. I have always felt that traditional trading education is dry and inaccessible.

Consequently, we took on the challenge to create a gamified trading platform. Our goal was to build a space where one could learn the intricacies of investing through interactive games, rather than boring lectures. This was supported by dedicated AI assistance that explained every market indicator and the specific implications of every call or put made by the user, ensuring they learned from every action.

AI at Warwick

However, the true showstopper of the Hackathon had to be the unanimous adoption of GenAI across the teams. We got a vivid glimpse of the possibilities that GenAI brings to the table. Because the time we traditionally invested in the technical building of the solution was significantly reduced by these tools, we found ourselves with a new luxury, time.

We were able to dedicate much more of our time to brainstorming and deeply understanding the end users. This allowed us to come up with superior solution architectures.

One such process that flourished in this environment is Design Thinking. Often, Design Thinking gets sidelined when teams are rushing to brainstorm for a deadline-bound project, simply because there isn't enough time to be empathetic and iterative. But here, thanks to the efficiency of AI, we saw the proper, effective implementation of Design Thinking principles throughout our Hackathon experience. It proved that when technology handles the execution, humans are free to master the innovation.

We witnessed teams coming up with truly inventive gamified solutions, with some even creating fully functional games to teach finance, all while leveraging GenAI solutions for the heavy lifting of programming. We saw amazing ideas powered by eye-catching presentations.

Interestingly, while the visual presentation itself was not the primary scoring criterion, the experience brought the importance of presenting ideas eloquently to the forefront. We learned that a critical step in creating solutions for disruptive ideas is the ability to present them effectively to stakeholders, whether they are your investors, your end consumers, or judges in a competition.

Fintech Master’s experience

The judge lineup was quite impressive as well. We were critiqued by experts from different walks of the Fintech world, including one of the key members of the Gillmore Centre, Dr. Dan Philips. As someone who actively runs a hedge fund, his insights were key in shaping our solutions. He provided the answers to practical, real-world hurdles that our theoretical solutions might otherwise have faced, grounding our ideas.

Ultimately, it was an exceptional effort by the Gillmore Centre team to bring together all these aspiring students and raw ideas for two days of rigorous brainstorming, prototyping, and final presentations.