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Sfikas: The Hackathon underscores NBK’s commitment to support Kuwait’s digital community and nurture talented youth
Our digital excellence is a core aspect of our strategies and operations, and a key pillar to enrich our customers’ banking experience
Marafi: We are honored to partner with a leading institution of NBK’s stature to organize a first-of-its-kind event in the region
National Bank of Kuwait (NBK) seeks to maintain its position as a leading provider of top-notch digital services through continuous development of its digital channels. In this context, the bank partnered with CODED academy to organize “NBK Online Hackathon” for programmers with the aim of delivering new ideas and innovations to develop NBK mobile banking.
In the Hackathon held from 24 to 26 June, 2021 saw the participation of 25 teams of FinTech programmers, of which 15 teams completed their projects successfully with ready-to-present functional prototypes, which were evaluated and three winning teams were announced.
The winners included “Olympus” team, which ranked first and received KD 2500 prize, whereas “Coffee Addicts” and “ta git” teams came second and third, respectively, and were awarded valuable prizes from Huawei.
Throughout the Hackathon, NBK team supported all participating teams and shared keynote workshops and their experiences with them about NBK Mobile Banking, cyber- security and testing. In addition, workshop sessions were supported by Huawei with their presentation on AppGallery ecosystem to participants.
On this occasion, Mr. Nikolaos Sfikas, Head of Group IT at National Bank of Kuwait, said: “Our digital excellence is a core aspect of our strategies and operations, though which we aim to provide our customers with top-notch digital banking services and advanced payment solutions, in a way that contributes to enriching their banking experience.”
“We are always happy to establish connections with all the stakeholders of Kuwait’s digital community, as well as support and cooperate with talented youth, as reflected in this Hackathon organized in partnership with the premier coding academy CODED,” he added.
Sfikas noted that NBK is continuously improving its digital channels experience, mainly NBK Mobile Banking, with new value propositions, features and services as well as advanced world-class payment solutions, with a customer-first perspective, by placing their needs at the center.
On his part, Mr. Ahmad Marafi, CODED CEO and Co-Founder, said: “We are honored at CODED academy to partner with a leading institution of NBK’s stature to organize and launch the NBK Online Hackathon, the first of its kind in the region, offering opportunities for creative programmers. We also appreciate NBK’s consistent support of the creative Kuwaiti youth in all fields, especially digital-savvy youth.”
On a related note, NBK received the Best Financial Innovation Lab Award in Kuwait for 2021 in the annual survey conducted by the international Global Finance magazine based on the input from a large panel of experts, analysts, consultants and corporate executives around the world.
NBK’s Digital Office, with the Digital Factory organization under its umbrella, is the largest financial technology accelerator in the region, which plays a key role in driving the bank’s digital transformation strategy by enabling it to foresee future growth opportunities related to FinTech domain.
Furthermore, the Office acts as an incubator and a meeting point for innovators and emerging companies in the FinTech domain through the new Digital Factory established as per the highest standards adopting the creative thinking approach as a key basis.
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© Press Release 2021
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