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Societe Generale: A successful "Defrag the dinosaur" Hackathon in Berlin

By FF Newsroom · 22 March 2019

Societe Generale: A successful "Defrag the dinosaur" Hackathon in Berlin
Societe Generale Equipment Finance (SGEF) has hosted from March 15th to 17th a hackathon in Berlin gathering over 150 developers, designers, data scientists and analytics experts from more than 30 nationalities to hunt down the so-called “dinosaurs of the banking systems”. The aim of the event, which was open to the public, was to stimulate innovation and propose new developments to better process data notably through automation and build smart solutions UX/UI design. SGEF is the international equipment and vendor finance specialist of Societe Generale group. With over 3,000 people across 40 countries, SGEF serves over 230,000 customers in the Transportation, Industrial Equipment, High-Tech and Healthcare & Green Energy markets. Over the three days, 40 mentors from SGEF network (15 countries) coached the hackathon participants throughout the various stages of the event Seven challenges around fintech and banking systems: The participants have been proposed to select a challenge amongst several thematics for the equipment finance sector:
  • Develop a sustainable finance product taking in account Environmental, social and governance criteria
  • Build a digital assistant to provide customer with the best fitted financial product
  • Establish a shared KYC (Know Your Customer) platform accessible through API
  • Improve credit analysis through API to automatize financial statement analysis with machine learning
  • Simplify credit decision process with embedded decision engine
  • Create a smart contract management solution to improve customer experience
  • Invent a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) module to deliver automatized finance modules.
3 prize winners were selected: The jury, presided by Jochen Jehmlich, CEO of Societe Generale Equipment Finance, and composed of Societe Generale Group Innovation representative, technical architects, external Fintechs and Philippe Rozental Chief Operating Office and Chief Investment Officer of SGEF selected three projects for their business impact, innovation spirit, technical efficiency and user experience design.
  • Grand Prize (€10,000): ‘Big Brother’ team on KYC optimization using optical character recognition, Machine Reading and interpretation of signs technologies to industrialize the process
  • Second Prize (€5,000): ‘Hammond’ team on Credit scoring optimization transforming any data sources into digitalized data
  • Third prize (€2000): ‘Sales Wingman’ multi-functional platform to improve Sales network efficiency using voice control, speech guidance and machine learning technologies for continuous improvement
This event was also an opportunity for Societe Generale to detect young talents, source fresh ideas on business topics and demonstrate the Group's commitment in innovation. In the past few years, capitalizing on internal IT teams’ dynamism and innovative spirit, the bank has organized several hackathons and challenges internationally to identify projects with the potential to reinvent banking relations and successfully transform the company. The Berliner «Defrag the dinosaur » Hackathon is the last initiative of the bank in the development of its open innovation system, extending its reach to partner communities and their creativity. “At Societe Generale Equipment Finance we are continuously trying to be agile to provide the best solutions in the market to our clients. Digital technology has been impacting the way we interact and serve them providing numerous opportunities to innovate while transforming our processes. This hackathon is a new initiative launched to accelerate our digital transformation and remain a leading leasing player” commented Jochen Jehmlich, CEO of Societe Generale Equipment Finance. “The event was a great opportunity to boost our innovation mindset, gathering many digital talents to develop prototypes that could be industrialized into our network. The number and quality of the projects that emerged were quite impressive and appreciated by our teams” added Philippe Rozental, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Information Officer of Societe Generale Equipment Finance.

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