UnionBank holds ‘hackathon’ to develop IT solutions

the Philippines (UnionBank) is strengthening its “digital transformation journey” with its hackathon series this year that will focus on developing solutions in banking and e-commerce.

PL@ Y”, UnionBank targets Information technology students and professionals for a series of seminars, in which the participants will face challenges in e- commerce or SME tools and how to incorporate new technology solutions in banking such as artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, identity authentication, robotics and data analytics.

It said this hackathon will provide UnionBank with the capacity to build its pool of digital talents by either hiring or partnering with them to help the bank deliver agile and fast innovations.

“This is a part of a much bigger digital journey of UnionBank. All of us here, that’s what transformation. We want to describe what it means for our customers and for us,” Ramon president ( SVP) and head of Technology Solutions Group, said in a news conference on July 13.

“We either transform digitally or we die. This is where we see the industry going in the future. We have to change the way we do everything and the way we expect our customers to bank with us,” he continued.

through UHack, people can expect a digitally transformed banking experience with UnionBank.

“We have new things coming within our apps, you can expect things to be changing in our that initiative,” he said.

Meanwhile, SVP and head of Eon Banking Paolo Eugenio Baltao also said that aside from all the ideas they will get from UHack, the bank will continue to produce and offer services that are enabled by technology.

“For example, you would see our soon- to- be launched Convergent Banking, which is our channel on mobile Internet. All the learnings and all the insights that we’ve got, we’re putting it all [ there] to improve [ our services], so that we will come with new experiences aided by technology,” Baltao explained.

UnionBank said the be held in key cities across the country throughout the year.