05 September 2024
His Excellency the Chief Executive Officer of the Insurance Authority,
Engineer Naji Al-Faisal Al-Tamimi, crowned the winners of the first edition of
the “Insurance Hackathon”, which was held by the Insurance Authority, from the
3rd to 28th of this August, with the participation of an elite group of
specialists and those interested in the insurance technology sector to exchange
experiences and compete by providing innovative technical solutions for the
insurance sector in specific tracks, on the sidelines of the “FinTech 24”
conference, which will be held during the period from the 3rd to the 5th of
September 2024 at the Riyadh Front Center for conferences and exhibitions.
The initiative, which is the
first of its kind in the Saudi insurance sector, aims at motivating the
concepts of creativity and innovation, contributing to the support of the
efforts to automate the insurance sector services, and employing the latest
technology and artificial intelligence methods in the sector, in addition to
contributing to achieving the goals of the Financial Sector Development Program
by raising the level of automation in the insurance sector. The “Hackathon”
sought to create an interactive and competitive environment among the
participants in its activities, the elite specialists and those interested in
the insurance technology sector, including entrepreneurs, students, and those
who have creative ideas to address the challenges and develop the insurance
sector through creating technical solutions that contribute to facilitating the
experience of beneficiaries and stakeholders through two main tracks:
The track of automating insurance
services through launching new innovative services or developing existing
services using technology, while the second track, “insurance technology
companies”, cares about adopting ideas to build emerging and qualitative
companies and benefiting from digital tools in developing the insurance sector.
The hackathon journey and its sessions resulted in the presentation of a
package of distinctive creative projects and presentations that were subjected
to an evaluation process by the Hackathon Awards jury. In the insurance
services automation track, the Romanah team won the first place prize worth
50,000 riyals, the Waei team won the second place prize worth 30,000 riyals,
while the Dafa team won the third place prize worth 20,000 riyals.
As for the insurance technology companies track, The Smart
Transformation team won the first place award, The Decisive won the second
place award, while the ByNow team won the third place award.
The hackathon jury relied on a set of evaluation criteria to select the
winning projects including:
creativity and innovation, the degree of the expected influence, the
applicable business model, the presentation, the plan to enter the market,
target customers, identifying the target market and facing the solution to the
challenges or developing services. In his speech during the ceremony, the CEO
of the Insurance Authority, Eng. Naji Al-Tamimi, expressed his happiness and pride
in the great interaction he witnessed from the specialists and innovators from
the various groups participating in the hackathon and the creative ideas and
distinctive projects they presented that contributed to reaching the
hackathon’s goals, which is the first of its kind within the promising
insurance sector in the Kingdom.
Al-Tamimi considered that the Insurance Authority’s adoption of the idea
of the “hackathon” and the platform it provides for creativity, innovation, and
positive competition comes within the framework of a series of efforts
undertaken by the Authority to develop the insurance sector in the Kingdom,
improve its tools and industry standards, and enrich its content with
innovative products and solutions, in accordance with the aspirations of the
2030 vision and its ambitious goals in developing the financial sector in the
Kingdom, of which the insurance sector represents one of its main drivers and
pillars. In his speech, Al-Tamimi congratulated the owners of the winning
projects, and extended his thanks and appreciation to all the participants and
the organizers for the success of the Insurance Hackathon in its first edition,
which will pave the way to launch similar versions during the next phase in the
light of the distinguished outcomes it produced.