The overall winner of this year’s Datathon has been announced by its hosts, business advisory firm Deloitte, as ‘Data Nations’, a team of data experts who developed FinTastic; a digital tool to help people make better financial decisions at key moments in their life.
The theme for this year’s Datathon was ‘financial services for good’ which challenged data scientists and tech entrepreneurs to establish a useful link between how financial data can be used to help address some of the biggest challenges facing society today.
The winning concept, FinTastic, is an app designed to help people make sound financial decisions at times such as when they move into a home or get married. FinTastic would offer advice based on user data in the form of a chatbot and generate tailor-made financial plans, average spending, comparisons for products and personal spending and terminology for financial education.
Alex Cunningham of Data Nations, who works for the Scottish Government, said: “Financial hardship is an issue that can have long-lasting negative effects on people everywhere, particularly if they do not receive any meaningful guidance or advice. With FinTastic, our objective was to create a preventative product, something that stopped people from starting down a path that would eventually lead to a negative financial scenario. Our ethos wasn’t to fix, but rather to prevent.”
Kent Mackenzie, judge and director at Deloitte in Edinburgh, said: “The strength of the concepts from all teams involved were impressive and highlighted what can be achieved when data scientists, industry experts and academics come together to utilise information for the common good. The judges were presented with a number of fascinating ideas with potential, but Data Nations insight into the need for financial education and support and their concept of a tool which offers this to the whole of society made them the clear overall winner.”