At Trust, one of our four key values is ‘Build to Sustain’. This is all about building for the long term – for our customers, business and the environment.

During our first year, we’ve built so much to make banking easier, more transparent and rewarding for our customers. This includes a 3-minute onboarding journey and the market’s first fully digital supplementary credit card.

To keep improving and innovating for our customers, we know that we need to innovate and improve the way that we work. And that’s where our inaugural Hackathon came in!

Not only was it a way to encourage our team to bring forward great ideas, it was also a reminder for us to apply the same lens we use to solve customer pain points to our own work.

Gen AI, APIs and chatbots 

Around 70 colleagues formed teams to submit ideas on how we could improve. Many of the ideas involved how we could use technologies like generative AI, automation APIs and chatbots to make our ways of working more efficient and better use the incredible tools and data available to us.

Next came the fun part. The top 12 shortlisted teams had just two days to design a prototype and then pitch their idea!

Our teams on Day 1 of the Trust Hackathon 

The heat was on as teams came together to develop and test their prototypes and prepare their pitches. Trust Senseis (mentors from our leadership team) were on hand to provide guidance and feedback.

In the final showcase inspired by the American television series Shark Tank, teams pitched their ideas to a judging panel including our Chief Executive Officer Dwaipayan Sadhu, Chief Information Officer Rajay Rai, Chief Operating Officer Natalia Goh, Head of Legal Matthew Hunter, and guest judge Denis Bugrov, Senior Partner with McKinsey & Company.

To win, the teams didn’t just have to convince the Sharks, they also had to win the votes of the audience in the People’s Choice category.

Our winning teams, Code Conduits and Trust Pea!

And what were the two winning ideas?

One winner was a team called Code Conduits, whose idea promoted data-driven decisions using large language models.

The other winner was Trust Pea, with an innovative way to streamline data storage that enables a better understanding of marketing campaigns’ effectiveness.

The winning teams will travel to Europe to attend one of the world’s biggest mobile technology conferences, Mobile World Congress Barcelona 2024. We hope they will bring back plenty of inspiration for more innovation as we Build to Sustain!

The winning teams with two of our judges, Dwaipayan Sadhu and Natalia Goh 

Stewart Gray, Agile Coach, commented: “The ideas and energy generated by the teams were an inspiration to us all and a great reminder of the opportunities we have for continuous improvement. This is essential for us to be able to deliver the sort of customer experience we aim to and to create an environment that our teams love to work in.”