BENEFIT, the Kingdom’s innovator and leading company in Fintech and electronic financial transactions service, announced the successful completion of their latest innovation challenge “Open Banking for Consumer Lending” as part of BENEFIT’S FinTech Award Hackathon series 2022 in partnership with Central Bank of Bahrain and Fintech Galaxy.

The BENEFIT FinTech Award hackathon is a themed series that invites participants to build value creation Fintech applications that aims to tackle challenges in the sector  and could potentially serve as a foundation of a reputable business. In its current version,  the award is part of the Bahrain Supernova Challenges 2022; which is the second annual innovation challenge from the Central Bank of Bahrain’s Digital Lab, FinHub 973, that aims to foster open innovation across the Financial Services industry.

The theme of this year’s hackathon is Open Banking, which aims to bridge the gap between fintech enthusiasts and corporates while also offering the Bahrain financial services landscape with cutting-edge insights into innovative techniques.

The competition, inspired by Bahrain’s competitive consumer lending ecosystem, invites participants to use open banking API to tackle the issue that borrowers face when it comes to loan settlement and buyout between banks when they wish to obtain a debt consolidation loan. The hackathon awards the winner with a prize of USD 5000.

The competition gathered a total of 11 submissions, resulting in 8 shortlisted candidates, 5 finalists, and 1 winner. NF Innova Fintense, the winner demonstrated how the consumer can find the perfect loan offer from several banks on the platform – utilising its embedded open banking API -, then selects the most appropriate offer and apply for it instantly. The entire online loan application from start to finish – including KYC and salary verification – only takes several minutes and at the end of the process the money is disbursed instantly to the consumer’s bank account. The finalists from Bahrain, United States, Estonia, India and Austria competed in demonstrating concepts and solutions for consumer lending.

Hanan Hasan, Assistant Manager – Marketing, PR and Innovation, commented, “With Bahrain at the forefront of the Open Banking movement in the MENA region, this challenge empowers both local and international financial technology companies to explore new and original solutions in a pioneering regulatory landscape. At BENEFIT, we are honored to be supporting an increasingly vital role in the implementation of innovative fintech solutions, and our hackathon aims to foster the growth of Bahrain’s FinTech sector while bringing together individuals with varied skill sets.”