Zagreb, May 2, 2017 – Intesa Sanpaolo Group will bring its creative idea competition to Croatia this year. The 24-hour innovation marathon called Novathon #withPBZ will be organised in cooperation with Privredna banka Zagreb, member of the Intesa Sanpaolo Group, and will take place at Lauba on 23 and 24 September. The competition is open to developers, web designers, marketing experts and students in related areas who will work in teams to create, design and build concepts, prototypes or interactive models of applications for responsive, mobile and branch banking services, which can transform the way people manage their finances. The winning team will take the top prize of 75 thousand kuna.
Intesa Sanpaolo Group, in cooperation with its Innovation Center, launched the Novathon event series, a creative app development contest in 2016. The first such 24-hour event was held in Budapest last summer.
During the non-stop marathon, the teams have to develop an application that addresses one of the following challenges:
- Smart Payments
- Digital Wealth Management
- Smart Branch
- Bridge solutions
- Outside-in banking
- Big financial data
To support the teams in their work, renowned experts and mentors from PBZ and the Intesa Sanpaolo Group will be assigned to them. The event will be further enlivened by internationally acclaimed speakers in the FinTech field whose motivational speeches will give a boost to the ideas of the participants.
One of the special guests at Novathon #withPBZ will be Chris Skinner, the fintech titan behind the blog called theFinanser.com, author of the best-selling books Digital Bank and ValueWeb, and the president of the European Networking Forum, Financial Service Club. He was named one of the most influential people in the banking sector, one of the top five most influential people in the BankInfoSecurity chart and one of the top 40 most influential people in financial technologies. The insights and thoughts he will present at the competition will undoubtedly inspire participants to find new solutions for modern banking.
Another one great guest who will inspire and help participants to exploit their full potential is Matteo Rizzi who has been actively engaged in the FinTech space for over 20 years. He knows how to bridge traditional banking with new or disruptive technologies, because he understands both. He is the founder of swiftcommunity.net and the Innotribe Startup Challenge and the co-founder of Innotribe and www.FinTechStage.com. For three years in a row (2014-2016), Financial News nominated Matteo as one of the “40 most influential FinTech executives in Europe” and Bank Innovation named him one of the “30 Innovators to watch shaping the industry” in 2014.
And the third great guest is a Croatian entrepreneur Nenad Bakić, investor and philanthropist, currently mostly focused on digital transformation in education – founder of IRIM, the leading organisation in introducing STEM education in the region. Mathematician, with careers in science, digital media, finance and human resources. Serial founder start-ups, with multiple successful exits. Companies he founded and still owns are the market leaders in their respective markets. As investor in public companies, he is the most prominent deep-value, long-term activist investor in Croatia.
„This innovation marathon focused on financial technologies perfectly corresponds to the innovative vision of PBZ and Intesa Sanpaolo. The creative spirit of the young talented professionals and students who will participate in this competition is key for us and their ideas might be included in our innovative projects. This type of competition allows us to have a fresh look at the latest needs and expectations of our clients because PBZ and Intesa Sanpaolo firmly believe that the application of new ideas is the road to better banking, business and quality of life. This event complements the strategy for digitalizing PBZ’s products and services. By creating world-class digital solutions that simplify banking, PBZ offers its clients an updated and modern experience of doing business with the bank, said Dinko Lucić, Member of the Management Board of PBZ.
Registration for the competition starts on 1 May at 12 P.M. and last until 8 September at 12 P.M. Everyone who wishes to compete must register within that time by filling out a form at the website www.novathon.net.